es you and me are in," says he. "Well, I seen
how they make so much powder and sell it--smokeless powder. For that
they have to use a awful lot of picric acid."

"What kind of acid?" says I. "Pickles?"

"I don't know," says he. "I wouldn't know it if it was on a plate--only
I know they have to make smokeless powder out of it. So I bought all I
could find laying round here or there--not very much; only two or three
hundred thousand dollars' worth.

"Well," says he, stretching out his legs and yawning, "it's the same old
story, Curly. I couldn't help it and I didn't mean to do it the least
way in the world; but now this here picric acid--whatever it is--it's
worth two or three times what it was just a little while ago. I cleaned
up--oh, maybe two or three hundred thousand dollars on that. There ain't
enough in these things to keep me very busy. I don't care for making
money nohow, because it's so easy. If there was a real man's game now, I
wouldn't mind mixing with it."

"Cows is something that folks has to have whether they are rich or
poor," says I to him.

"Shore; and it's a good game too. If you look around you'll find that
there is some things that everybody has got to use somehow,
somewhere--wood, copper, oil, iron; things like that. You can't build
houses and live in 'em unless you have some of them things. Everybody
has to buy 'em in wholesale or in retail. I like to buy 'em a little
farther back even than wholesale--when they are what you call raw
resources.

"If you take things that's made up in packages you can sell them too, a
little at a time, but slow. Some folks likes to trade that way; they got
to have pictures--objects--right before 'em to believe their money's
safe. That's a little slow for me and you, Curly. I like to take the
goods before they are put up in packages and buy a lot of
them--something that folks has got to have."

"That's where your game is weak, Colonel," says I. "For instance, you
deal in cows on the hoof. That ain't respectable. When you cut up cows
and hogs into sides, hams and sausage, then's when you get respectable.
Ain't you got plenty proof of that? Look at them Wisners, for instance."

He snorts at that and ain't happy.

"Well, it's the truth," says I. "Look at us! We ain't nobody here. Old
Man Wisner's the king bee of this here row of houses. We ain't
one-two-ten in this race."

"Huh! Is that so? I'm running free, under a pull; and you can't kick.
But then, we're h