Following his guide, or rather side by side, Oliver walked round to the saloon.
"Does she know you admire her?" enquired Oliver.
"I don't," said John. "I admire her money."
"Would you be willing to sell yourself?"
"For ten thousand dollars? I guess I would. That's the easiest way of getting rich. It would take me two hundred years, at eight dollars a week, to make such a fortune."
They entered the saloon. Behind the counter stood a woman of thirty-five, weighing upward of two hundred pounds. She looked good-natured, but the idea of a marriage between her and John Meadows, a youth of nineteen, seemed too ridiculous.
"What will you have?" she asked, in a Teutonic accent.
"Sarsaparilla and lager!" answered John.
Frau Winterhammer filled two mugs in the most business-like manner. She evidently had no idea that John was an admirer.
In the same business-like manner she received the money he laid on the counter.