“Sure!” Beasley fingered the precious nuggets lovingly. “Gee! Ther’s nigh five hundred dollars there.”
“Fi’ hundred—an’ more,” cried Ike anxiously.
But Beasley’s astonishment was quickly hidden under his commercial instincts. He would have called them “commercial.”
“We’ll soon fix that,” he said, setting the scales.
Ike leant against the bar watching the man finger his precious ore as he placed each of the six nuggets in the scale and weighed them separately. He took the result down on paper and worked their separate values out at his own market prices. In five minutes the work was completed, and the man behind the bar looked up with a grin.
“I don’t gener’ly make a bad guess,” he said blandly. “But I reckoned ’em a bit high this journey. Ther’s four hundred an’ seventy-six dollars comin’ to you—ha’f cash an’ ha’f credit. Is it a deal?”
The other’s face flamed up. A volcanic heat set him almost shouting.
“To hell!” he cried fiercely. “Ther’s fi’ hundred dollars ther’ if ther’s a cent. An’ I want it all cash.”
Beasley shook his head. He had this boy’s exact measure, and knew just how to handle him.
“The scales don’t lie,” he said. “But ther’, it’s the way wi’ youse fellers. You see a chunk o’ gold an’ you don’t see the quartz stickin’ around it. Here, I’ll put a hundred an’ seventy-six credit an’ the rest cash. I can’t speak fairer.”