“All right—bring on the paper—make it out, hard and fast,” Wild Water cried in the anger of surrender.
Smoke immediately wrote out the document, wherein Wild Water agreed to take every egg delivered to him at ten dollars per egg, provided that the two dozen advanced to him brought about a reconciliation with Lucille Arral.
Wild Water paused, with uplifted pen, as he was about to sign. “Hold on,” he said. “When I buy eggs I buy good eggs.”
“They ain't a bad egg in the Klondike,” Shorty snorted.
“Just the same, if I find one bad egg you've got to come back with the ten I paid for it.”
“That's all right,” Smoke placated. “It's only fair.”
“An' every bad egg you come back with I'll eat,” Shorty declared.
Smoke inserted the word “good” in the contract, and Wild Water sullenly signed, received the trial two dozen in a tin pail, pulled on his mittens, and opened the door.
“Good-by, you robbers,” he growled back at them, and slammed the door.
Smoke was a witness to the play next morning in Slavovitch's. He sat, as Wild Water's guest, at the table adjoining Lucille Arral's. Almost to the letter, as she had forecast it, did the scene come off.