“Don’t you come butting in on my market,” protested the prospector, elbowing the driver away. “I got to this gent first.”
“Those shares have been used all over this section for counters in poker games when beans got too expensive,” sneered the driver.
The prospector pulled out more papers.
“If you’ll take twenty thousand at ten cents a share I’ll pass ’em over. I was intending to hold on to ten thousand shares for a gamble. I tell you there’s something, somehow, somewhere, that says the hunch is out for ‘Bright Eyes.’ But I’ll let go for ten cents if you’ll take the bunch.”
“That’s no better offer than you made the other night,” I stated.
“I was pretty drunk, then, and I didn’t mean to make it. I’m daffy now, I reckon, or I wouldn’t be doing it over again.”
I stood there and looked them over and for the first time I gave a little real thought to that gold-mine proposition. Up to then the matter had been mere sound, shooting into one ear and out the other. I had been having plenty to think about in other lines.
It struck me that I was being played for a sucker by a couple of mighty awkward amateurs. Talk about Zebulon Kingsley buying a gold brick! That affair had been well buttered by some slick operators. What those two chaps were trying on me was truly raw work. That stage-driver—I didn’t even know his name—must have a healthy hate for me hidden deep down in him! I have cuffed a dog in my life and had him show more affection afterward, but I couldn’t believe that such treatment helped to mellow love in a human being. I knew it wouldn’t improve my own disposition any. In my thoughts I had some excuse for the two. They had probably been brought up to believe that the ordinary Easterner who had not already bought some punk gold-mine stock was thriftily saving up to buy some.
“There’s one of ’em born every minute,” I remarked to the stage-driver, “but I didn’t know I looked so much like one. Run away, the two of you, and fan yourselves with that stock; that’s the only way you’ll ever raise any wind with it.”
“You ain’t talking to me, are you—to me—Wash Flye?” inquired the driver.