“Come in,” they heard Dwight Sanderson yell irritably, when they knocked at his door, and they entered to find him squatted by a stone fireplace and pounding coffee wrapped in a piece of flour-sacking.
“What d'ye want?” he demanded harshly, emptying the pounded coffee into the coffee-pot that stood on the coals near the front of the fireplace.
“To talk business,” Smoke answered. “You've a town-site located here, I understand. What do you want for it?”
“Ten thousand dollars,” came the answer. “And now that I've told you, you can laugh, and get out. There's the door. Good-by.”
“But I don't want to laugh. I know plenty of funnier things to do than to climb up this cliff of yours. I want to buy your town-site.”
“You do, eh? Well, I'm glad to hear sense.” Sanderson came over and sat down facing his visitors, his hands resting on the table and his eyes cocking apprehensively toward the coffee-pot. “I've told you my price, and I ain't ashamed to tell you again—ten thousand. And you can laugh or buy, it's all one to me.”
To show his indifference he drummed with his knobby knuckles on the table and stared at the coffee-pot. A minute later he began to hum a monotonous “Tra-la-loo, tra-la-lee, tra-la-lee, tra-la-loo.”
“Now look here, Mr. Sanderson,” said Smoke. “This town-site isn't worth ten thousand. If it was worth that much it would be worth a hundred thousand just as easily. If it isn't worth a hundred thousand—and you know it isn't—then it isn't worth ten cents.”
Sanderson drummed with his knuckles and hummed, “Tra-la-loo, tra-la-lee,” until the coffee-pot boiled over. Settling it with a part cup of cold water, and placing it to one side of the warm hearth, he resumed his seat. “How much will you offer?” he asked of Smoke.
“Five thousand.”