Long and earnestly did he scan those small pictures that in many ways revealed the fact that Rob had indeed been in the war zone, close to where terrible battles were being daily fought to prove whether the ideals of the Teuton or those of the Allies were to prevail from that time forth in the world.
Finally, Rob grew tired of talking. He turned the tables by starting Ralph into telling some things connected with his unique enterprise of fur farming. Once this subject came to the front and the farm boy was all animation, for it could be easily seen that his heart was in his peculiar profession.
“I’d always had ideas on the subject,” he went on to say, “but only a couple of years ago commenced to put them into practical operation. Dad gave me a hundred of his wildest acres that could never be used for anything else, and we had the tract fenced in, even going down several feet so as to keep my foxes from ever digging a burrow, and escaping in that way.”
“Did you catch or buy your first pair of blacks?” asked Rob.
“Well, as there hasn’t been a wild black fox seen around this neighborhood for twenty years and more, though plenty of common red ones,” Ralph explained, “we had to invest some big money for the first pair. But they had a litter of pups, and it happened that the little chaps came true to color, all right, though they sometimes revert back to the old stock, you know. So we got started, and by trading, selling, and buying I now have just sixteen foxes in my pen, some young, and others ready to donate their pelts this Fall, if the market quotations hold up.”
“About what price do you call a good one?” asked Sim.
“Oh! all the way from five hundred up to fifteen hundred dollars,” said Ralph in the most unconcerned way possible; at which Tubby’s eyes widened, and he exclaimed:
“Gingersnaps and popguns! but you surely don’t mean that amount of money for just one little black fox skin, Ralph?”
“Why, certainly,” the other assured him, smiling at Tubby’s amazement. “There have been extra fine ones that brought as much as three thousand dollars. I never expect to raise such expensive stock. I’m counting on five hundred as the basis of my calculations; and if you’re fairly successful in raising your litters, there’s good money in the business at that. Besides, it’s great sport in the bargain to one who really loves animals, and knows more or less of their cute ways.”
“Five hundred dollars for just one little skin!” Tubby was heard to mutter, as though that struck him as most remarkable. “Well, if you keep along as you’re going, Ralph, I can see you getting to be a second Rockefeller before you’re fifty. Now, I don’t suppose a skunk is quite as valuable an article, though the fellow brave enough to handle him deserves a fortune, according to my notion.”