Then they consider the question of a whale round-up in an expert manner. It don't look none too good, going out on rodeo in water about three miles too deep for wading, though the idea of lass'ing a whale calf and branding it does hold a certain fascination. Sandy says it would be the only livestock business on earth where you don't always have to be fearing a dry season; and Buck Devine says that's so, and likewise the range is practically unlimited, as any one can see from a good map, and wouldn't it be fine riding herd in a steam yacht with a high-class bartender handy, instead of on a so-and-so cayuse that was liable any minute to trade ends and pour you out of the saddle on to your lame shoulder.
They'd got to kidding about it by this time, when who should ride up but old Safety First Timmins. They spring the food whale on Safety with much flourish. They show him the pictures and quote prices on the hoof—which are low, but look what even a runt of a yearling whale that was calved late in the fall would weigh on the scales!—and no worry about fences or free range or winter feeding or water holes; nothing to do but ride round on your private steamboat with a good orchestra, and a chance to be dissolute and count your money. And look what a snap the pioneers will have with all the mavericks; probably not a single whale in the ocean yet branded! And does Timmins want to throw in with us? If he does mebbe they can fix up a deal with me because I want a good business man at the head of the new outfit.
But Safety says right off quick that it's all a pack of nonsense. He says it's the mad dream of a visionary or feeble-minded person. He don't deny there would be money in whales if they could be handled, but you couldn't handle anything that had the whole ocean to swim in that covers three quarters of the earth's surface, as he has often read. And how would you get a branding iron on a whale, and what good would it do you? He'd beat it out for Europe. He said they was foolish to think whales would stay in a herd, and he guessed I'd been talking just to hear myself talk, or more likely I'd been kidding 'em to get a good laugh.
Sandy says: "Well, I wasn't going to tell you at first, but I guess it'll be safe with you, you being a good friend of the Arrowhead, only don't let it go no farther; but the fact is the boss is negotiating for the whale privilege in Great Salt Lake. Yes, sir, she's bribing the Utah legislature this very minute to let the bill go through! And I guess that don't look much like kidding. As soon as the governor has signed the bill she'll put in a couple of good three-year-old bull whales and a nice little herd of heifers and have the world's meat supply at her finger ends in less than five years—just killing off the yearling steers."
Safety looks a bit startled at this, and Sandy goes on to say that though whale meat is now but a fad of the idle rich it's bound to be the meat of rich and poor alike in future. He'd bet a thousand dollars to a dime that by the time the next war come along the first thing they'd do would be to establish a whaleless day. He said whale meat was just that good.
Safety chewed his gum quite a time on this—he says if a man chews gum he won't ruin himself in pocket for tobacco—and he read the whale article over carefully and looked at the pictures again, but he still said it didn't sound to him like a legitimate business enterprise. He said for one thing there'd be trouble shipping the original herd up to Salt Lake. Sandy said it was true; there would be the initial expense of loading on to flat cars, and a couple of tunnels would have to be widened so the bulls wouldn't be rasped going through, but that I have already taken this up with the railroad company.
Safety says that may all be true, but, mark his words, the minute my herd gets into inland waters it will develop some kind of disease like anthrax or blackleg, and the whole bunch will die on me. Sandy says it will be a simple matter to vaccinate, because the animals will be as affectionate as kittens by that time through having been kindly handled, which is all a whale needs. He says they really got a very social nature and are loyal unto death. Once a whale is your friend, he says, it's for life, rain or shine, just so long as you treat him square. Even do a whale a favour just once and he'll remember your face, make no difference if it's fifty years; though being the same, it is true, in his hatreds, because a whale never forgives an injury. A sailor he happens to know once give a whale he had made friends with a chew of tobacco just for a joke and the animal got into an awful rage and tried to tear the ship down to get at him, and then he followed the ship all over the world waiting for this sailor to fall off or get wrecked or something, till finally the hunted man got so nervous he quit the sea and is now running a news stand in Seattle, if Safety don't believe it. It just goes to show that a whale as long as you're square with him is superior in mind and morals to a steer, which ain't got sense enough to know friend from foe.
Safety still shakes his head. He says "safe and sane" has been his motto throughout a long and busy life and this here proposition don't sound like neither one to him. The boys tell him he's missing a good thing by not throwing in with us. They say I'm giving 'em each a big block of stock, paid up and non-assessable, and they don't want him to come round later when they're rolling in wealth and ask why they didn't give him a chance too.
"I can just hear you talk," said Sandy. "You'll be saying: 'I knew that whole fool bunch when not one ever had a dollar he could call his own the day after he was paid off, and now look at 'em—throwing their hundreds of thousands right and left; houses with pianos in every room; new boots every week; silver-mounted saddles at a thousand each; choice wines, liquors, and cigars; private taxicabs; and Alexander J. Sawtelle, the wealthy banker, being elected to Congress by an overwhelming majority!' That's the way you'll be talking," said Sandy, "with regret eating into your vitals like some horrible acid that is fatal to man and beast."
Safety says he thinks they're all plumb crazy, and a fool and his money is soon parted—this being a saying he must have learned at the age of three and has never forgotten a word of—and he comes up to the house to see me. Mebbe he wanted to find out if I had really lost my mind, but he said nothing about whales. Just set round and talked the usual hard luck. Been in the stock business thirty years and never had a good year yet. Nothing left of his cattle but the running gear; and his land so poor you couldn't even raise a row on it unless you went there mad; and why he keeps on struggling in the bitter clutch of misfortune he don't know. But I always know why he keeps on struggling. Money! Nothing but money. So when he got through mourning over his ruined fortunes, and feebly said something about taking some mules off my hands at a fair price, I shut him off firmly. Whenever that old crook talks about taking anything off your hands he's plotting as near highway robbery as they'll let him stay out of jail for. He was sad when I refused two hundred and fifty dollars a span for my best mules.