he says, lookin' at me sharp.
'What kind of an outfit you got, Mr. Roberts?'"

"Me!--with only Hazel an' Hattie, an' them too small for heavy teamin'.

"'I can slap fourteen horses an' seven wagons onto the job at the jump,'
says I. 'An' if you want more, I'll get 'm, that's all.'

"'Give us fifteen minutes to consider, Mr. Roberts,' he says.

"'Sure,' says I, important as all hell--ahem--me!--'but a couple of
other things first. I want a two year contract, an' them figures all
depends on one thing. Otherwise they don't go.'

"'What's that,' he says.

"'The dump,' says I. 'Here we are on the ground, an' I might as well
show you.'

"An' I did. I showed 'm where I'd lose out if they stuck to their plan,
on account of the dip down an' pull up to the dump. 'All you gotta do,'
I says, 'is to build the bunkers fifty feet over, throw the road around
the rim of the hill, an' make about seventy or eighty feet of elevated
bridge.'

"Say, Saxon, that kind of talk got 'em. It was straight. Only they'd
been thinkin' about bricks, while I was only thinkin' of teamin'.

"I guess they was all of half an hour considerin', an' I was almost as
miserable waitin' as when I waited for you to say yes after I asked you.
I went over the figures, calculatin' what I could throw off if I had
to. You see, I'd given it to 'em stiff--regular city prices; an' I was
prepared to trim down. Then they come back.

"'Prices oughta be lower in the country,' says the top-guy.

"'Nope,' I says. 'This is a wine-grape valley. It don't raise enough
hay an' feed for its own animals. It has to be shipped in from the San
Joaquin Valley. Why, I can buy hay an' feed cheaper in San Francisco,
laid down, than I can here an' haul it myself.'

"An' that struck 'm hard. It was true, an' they knew it. But--say! If
they'd asked about wages for drivers, an' about horse-shoein' prices,
I'd a-had to come down; because, you see, they ain't no teamsters' union
in the country, an' no horseshoers' union, an' rent is low, an' them two
items come a whole lot cheaper. Huh! This afternoon I got a word bargain
with the blacksmith across from the post office; an' he takes my whole
bunch an' throws off twenty-five cents on each shoein', though it's on
the Q. T. But they didn't think to ask, bein' too full of bricks."

Billy felt in his breast pocket, drew out a legal-looking document, and
handed it to Saxon.

"There it is," he said, "the contract, full of all the agreemen