“Aw, listen to reason,” Wild Water pleaded. “I only want a couple of dozen. I'll give you twenty apiece for 'em. What do I want with all the rest of them eggs? I've went years in this country without eggs, an' I guess I can keep on managin' without 'em somehow.”
“Don't get het up about it,” Shorty counseled. “If you don't want 'em, that settles it. We ain't a-forcin' 'em on you.”
“But I do want 'em,” Wild Water complained.
“Then you know what they'll cost you—ninety-six hundred an' twenty dollars, an' if my figurin's wrong, I'll treat.”
“But maybe they won't turn the trick,” Wild Water objected. “Maybe Miss Arral's lost her taste for eggs by this time.”
“I should say Miss Arral's worth the price of the eggs,” Smoke put in quietly.
“Worth it!” Wild Water stood up in the heat of his eloquence. “She's worth a million dollars. She's worth all I've got. She's worth all the dust in the Klondike.” He sat down, and went on in a calmer voice. “But that ain't no call for me to gamble ten thousand dollars on a breakfast for her. Now I've got a proposition. Lend me a couple of dozen of them eggs. I'll turn 'em over to Slavovitch. He'll feed 'em to her with my compliments. She ain't smiled to me for a hundred years. If them eggs gets a smile for me, I'll take the whole boiling off your hands.”
“Will you sign a contract to that effect?” Smoke said quickly; for he knew that Lucille Arral had agreed to smile.
Wild Water gasped. “You're almighty swift with business up here on the hill,” he said, with a hint of a snarl.
“We're only accepting your own proposition,” Smoke answered.