"If you're out of luck, why don't you go to work?"
"Say, maybe you don't know who I am!" exclaimed the man indignantly.
"You're right there. Who are you?"
"I am Wellington Jonkers, the man who opened the Little Kitty and the Fat Herring. You must have heard about those properties. We sold eighty thousand shares of one and sixty thousand shares of the other."
"What at?" questioned Randy. "Two cents a share?"
"No, sir! Those shares went for twenty and twenty-five cents," said the man. And then, lowering his voice to a confidential tone, he continued: "If you young gents can stake me to a hundred or two I can put you wise to the biggest proposition in oil down here—a proposition that is bound to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars three months after it's started. I've got everything fixed to go right ahead. You just put up the two hundred, and I'll show you some facts and figures that will open your eyes. I've got the real dope, and——"
"You poor fish, you!" exclaimed Jack. "What do you take us for, anyhow?"
He and the others had seen this type of oil well community parasite before. In the restaurant attached to the hotel and also at the railroad station and at the shooting gallery they had met more than one slick individual who had wanted to "put them wise to the biggest oil proposition" imaginable, all for the small sum of from two cents to fifty cents per share in oil wells with such fanciful names as Sure Winner, Daylight Luck, and Sunshine Sally.
"Then you don't want to go into a real good thing?" said the man, his face falling.
"Not with you."