"We're all cool enough now-a-days," Chittenden replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Couldn't get up a blaze to heat a flat-iron!" and he passed in to the office, with the air of a man whose occupation is gone.
As Wakefield turned down the street, his eye fell upon a stock-board across the way, a board upon which had once been jotted down from day to day, a record of his varying fortunes. He remembered how, a few months ago, that same board showed white with Lame Gulch quotations. He reflected that, while the price set against each stock had made but a modest showing, running from ten cents up into the second dollar, a man of sense,—supposing such a phenomenon to have weathered the "boom,"—would have been impressed with the fact that the valuation thus placed upon the infant camp aggregated something like twenty millions of dollars. The absurdity of the whole thing struck Wakefield with added force, as he read the solitary announcement which now graced the board,—namely:
"To exchange: 1000 Race-Horse for a bull-terrier pup."
"Kind o' funny; ain't it?" said a voice close beside him.
It was Dicky Simmons, a youth of seedy aspect, but a cheerful countenance, who had come up with him, and was engaged in the perusal of the same announcement.
"Hullo, Simmons! Where do you hail from?"
"From Barnaby's ranch. I'm trying my hand at agriculture until this thing's blown over!"
"Think it's going to?"
"Oh, yes! When the tide's dead low it's sure to turn!" and the old hopeful look glistened in the boy's face.
"That's the case in Nature," Wakefield objected. "Nature hadn't anything to do with the boom. It was contrary to all the laws."