But the sale of The Flim Flam Murphy must go on. Chicken Bill sought the tenderfoot. He found him with a smile on his face reading the report of The Flim Flam Murphy assay. Chicken Bill guardedly explained that he had a partner, name not given, who objected to the sale. The partner held a one-quarter share in The Flim Flam Murphy. The stranger, who knew it all along from the records, pondered briefly. Finally he broke the silence:
“Would Chicken Bill sell his three-quarters?”
Chicken Bill composed his face. Chicken Bill would sell.
Nothing is big in the Southwest; transactions of millions are disposed of while one eats a flap-jack. In an hour the stranger had acquired The Flim Flam Murphy interest which was vested in Chicken Bill; in two hours that immoralist was speeding by vague trails to regions new, forty-five thousand dollars in his belt and a soreness in his heart.
Timberline felt a quiet amusement in the situation. It leaned back and waited in a superior way for the stranger to set up the low wail of the robbed. The outcry couldn’t be long deferred; the fraud must be soon unmasked since the development of The Flim Flam Murphy was gone about with diligence and on a dazzling scale.
But the stranger did not complain.
Two weeks were added to that vast eternity which had preceded them and the sobered sentiment of Timberline began to think it might better investigate. Timberline, however, would proceed with caution; missing its laugh, it must now guard itself against being laughed at.
It turned as the wise ones had begun to apprehend. The Flim Flam Murphy was a two-million dollar wonder. The talented Chicken Bill had overreached himself. With no hope beyond a plan to salt a claim, he had not thought to secure an assay for himself. The Flim Flam Murphy loomed upon mankind as Timberline’s richest strike.
Pike’s Peak Martin was the first to collect himself. Crawling from beneath that landslide of amazement which had caught and covered Timberline, he visited the Belle Union with a resolved air. Pointedly but fully Pike’s Peak Martin tendered himself in marriage to Dead wood Maggie. That lady did not hurl a butter-dish; such feats would seem too effervescent on the part of a gentlewoman worth five hundred thousand dollars.
Deadwood Maggie blushed with drooping lids as she heard the words of Pike’s Peak Martin.