“How much do you want?” Womble demanded, with a contempt in his voice equal to that in his face.
“I made an estimate of the sack, and I—ah—should say it weighed about twenty pounds. What do you say we call it four thousand?”
“But it’s all I’ve got, man!” Womble cried out.
“You’ve got her,” the other said soothingly. “She must be worth it. Think what I’m giving up. Surely it is a reasonable price.”
“All right.” Womble rushed across the floor to the gold-sack. “Can’t put this deal through too quick for me, you—you little worm!”
“Now, there you err,” was the smiling rejoinder. “As a matter of ethics isn’t the man who gives a bribe as bad as the man who takes a bribe? The receiver is as bad as the thief, you know; and you needn’t console yourself with any fictitious moral superiority concerning this little deal.”
“To hell with your ethics!” the other burst out. “Come here and watch the weighing of this dust. I might cheat you.”
And the woman, leaning against the bunk, raging and impotent, watched herself weighed out in yellow dust and nuggets in the scales erected on the grub-box. The scales were small, making necessary many weighings, and Messner with precise care verified each weighing.
“There’s too much silver in it,” he remarked as he tied up the gold-sack. “I don’t think it will run quite sixteen to the ounce. You got a trifle the better of me, Womble.”
He handled the sack lovingly, and with due appreciation of its preciousness carried it out to his sled.