Smoke Bellew - Jack London (best summer reads of all time .txt) 📗

an’ me has right now in our possession exactly nine hundred an’ seventy-three eggs. They cost us exactly two thousand, seven hundred an’ sixty dollars, reckonin’ dust at sixteen an ounce an’ not countin’ time. An’ now listen to me. If we stick up Wild Water for ten dollars a egg we stand to win, clean net an’ all to the good, just exactly six thousand nine hundred and seventy dollars. Now that’s a book-makin’ what is, if anybody should ride up on a dog-sled an’ ask you. An’ I’m in half on it! Put her there, Smoke. I’m that thankful I’m sure droolin’ gratitude. Book-makin’! Say, I’d sooner run with the chicks than the ponies any day.”

At eleven that night Smoke was routed from sound sleep by Shorty, whose fur parka exhaled an atmosphere of keen frost and whose hand was extremely cold in its contact with Smoke’s cheek.

“What is it now?” Smoke grumbled. “Rest of Sally’s hair fallen out?”

“Nope. But I just had to tell you the good news. I seen Slavovitch. Or Slavovitch seen me, I guess, because he started the seance. He says to me: ‘Shorty, I want to speak to you about them eggs. I’ve kept it quiet. Nobody knows I sold ‘em to you. But if you’re speculatin’, I can put you wise to a good thing.’ An’ he did, too, Smoke. Now what’d you guess that good thing is?”

“Go on. Name it.”

“Well, maybe it sounds incredible, but that good thing was Wild Water Charley. He’s lookin’ to buy eggs. He goes around to Slavovitch an’ offers him five dollars an egg, an’ before he quits he’s offerin’ eight. An’ Slavovitch ain’t got no eggs. Last thing Wild Water says to Slavovitch is that he’ll beat the head offen him if he ever finds out Slavovitch has eggs cached away somewheres. Slavovitch had to tell ‘m he’d sold the eggs, but that the buyer was secret.

“Slavovitch says to let him say the word to Wild Water who’s got the eggs. ‘Shorty,’ he says to me, ‘Wild Water’ll come a-runnin’. You can hold him up for eight dollars.’ ‘Eight dollars, your grandmother,’ I says. ‘He’ll fall for ten before I’m done with him.’ Anyway, I told Slavovitch I’d think it over and let him know in the mornin’. Of course we’ll let ‘m pass the word on to Wild Water. Am I right?”

“You certainly are, Shorty. First thing in the morning tip off Slavovitch. Have him tell Wild Water that you and I are partners in the deal.”

Five minutes later Smoke was again aroused by Shorty.

“Say! Smoke! Oh, Smoke!”

“Yes?”

“Not a cent less than ten a throw. Do you get that?”

“Sure thing—all right,” Smoke returned sleepily.

In the morning Smoke chanced upon Lucille Arral again at the dry-goods counter of the A. C. Store.

“It’s working,” he jubilated. “It’s working. Wild Water’s been around to Slavovitch, trying to buy or bully eggs out of him. And by this time Slavovitch has told him that Shorty and I own the corner.”

Lucille Arral’s eyes sparkled with delight. “I’m going to breakfast right now,” she cried. “And I’ll ask the waiter for eggs, and be so plaintive when there aren’t any as to melt a heart of stone. And you know Wild Water’s been around to Slavovitch, trying to buy the corner if it costs him one of his mines. I know him. And hold out for a stiff figure. Nothing less than ten dollars will satisfy me, and if you sell for anything less, Smoke, I’ll never forgive you.”

That noon, up in their cabin, Shorty placed on the table a pot of beans, a pot of coffee, a pan of sourdough biscuits, a tin of butter and a tin of condensed cream, a smoking platter of moose-meat and bacon, a plate of stewed dried peaches, and called: “Grub’s ready. Take a slant at Sally first.”

Smoke put aside the harness on which he was sewing, opened the door, and saw Sally and Bright spiritedly driving away a bunch of foraging sled-dogs that belonged to the next cabin. Also he saw something else that made him close the door hurriedly and dash to the stove. The frying-pan, still hot from the moose-meat and bacon, he put back on the front lid. Into the frying-pan he put a generous dab of butter, then reached for an egg, which he broke and dropped spluttering into the pan. As he reached for a second egg, Shorty gained his side and clutched his arm in an excited grip.

“Hey! What you doin’?” he demanded.

“Frying eggs,” Smoke informed him, breaking the second one and throwing off Shorty’s detaining hand. “What’s the matter with your eyesight? Did you think I was combing my hair?”

“Don’t you feel well?” Shorty queried anxiously, as Smoke broke a third egg and dexterously thrust him back with a stiff-arm jolt on the breast. “Or are you just plain loco? That’s thirty dollars’ worth of eggs already.”

“And I’m going to make it sixty dollars’ worth,” was the answer, as Smoke broke the fourth. “Get out of the way, Shorty. Wild Water’s coming up the hill, and he’ll be here in five minutes.”

Shorty sighed vastly with commingled comprehension and relief, and sat down at the table. By the time the expected knock came at the door, Smoke was facing him across the table, and, before each, was a plate containing three hot, fried eggs.

“Come in!” Smoke called.

Wild Water Charley, a strapping young giant just a fraction of an inch under six feet in height and carrying a clean weight of one hundred and ninety pounds, entered and shook hands.

“Set down an’ have a bite, Wild Water,” Shorty invited. “Smoke, fry him some eggs. I’ll bet he ain’t scoffed an egg in a coon’s age.”

Smoke broke three more eggs into the hot pan, and in several minutes placed them before his guest, who looked at them with so strange and strained an expression that Shorty confessed afterward his fear that Wild Water would slip them into his pocket and carry them away.

“Say, them swells down in the States ain’t got nothin’ over us in the matter of eats,” Shorty gloated. “Here’s you an’ me an’ Smoke gettin’ outside ninety dollars’ worth of eggs an’ not battin’ an eye.”

Wild Water stared at the rapidly disappearing eggs and seemed petrified.

“Pitch in an’ eat,” Smoke encouraged.

“They—they ain’t worth no ten dollars,” Wild Water said slowly.

Shorty accepted the challenge. “A thing’s worth what you can get for it, ain’t it?” he demanded.

“Yes, but—”

“But nothin’. I’m tellin’ you what we can get for ‘em. Ten a throw, just like that. We’re the egg trust, Smoke an’ me, an’ don’t you forget it. When we say ten a throw, ten a throw goes.” He mopped his plate with a biscuit. “I could almost eat a couple more,” he sighed, then helped himself to the beans.

“You can’t eat eggs like that,” Wild Water objected. “It—it ain’t right.”

“We just dote on eggs, Smoke an’ me,” was Shorty’s excuse.

Wild Water finished his own plate in a half-hearted way and gazed dubiously at the two comrades. “Say, you fellows can do me a great favor,” he began tentatively. “Sell me, or lend me, or give me, about a dozen of them eggs.”

“Sure,” Smoke answered. “I know what a yearning for eggs is myself. But we’re not so poor that we have to sell our hospitality. They’ll cost you nothing—” Here a sharp kick under the table admonished him that Shorty was getting nervous. “A dozen, did you say, Wild Water?”

Wild Water nodded.

“Go ahead, Shorty,” Smoke went on. “Cook them up for him. I can sympathize. I’ve seen the time myself when I could eat a dozen, straight off the bat.”

But Wild Water laid a restraining hand on the eager Shorty as he explained. “I don’t mean cooked. I want them with the shells on.”

“So that you can carry ‘em away?”

“That’s the idea.”

“But that ain’t hospitality,” Shorty objected. “It’s—it’s tradin’.”

Smoke nodded concurrence. “That’s different, Wild Water. I thought you just wanted to eat them. You see, we went into this for a speculation.”

The dangerous blue of Wild Water’s eyes began to grow more dangerous. “I’ll pay you for them,” he said sharply. “How much?”

“Oh, not a dozen,” Smoke replied. “We couldn’t sell a dozen. We’re not retailers; we’re speculators. We can’t break our own market. We’ve got a hard and fast corner, and when we sell out it’s the whole corner or nothing.”

“How many have you got, and how much do you want for them?”

“How many have we, Shorty?” Smoke inquired.

Shorty cleared his throat and performed mental arithmetic aloud. “Lemme see. Nine hundred an’ seventy-three minus nine, that leaves nine hundred an’ sixty-two. An’ the whole shootin’-match, at ten a throw, will tote up just about nine thousand six hundred an’ twenty iron dollars. Of course, Wild Water, we’re playin’ fair, an’ it’s money back for bad ones, though they ain’t none. That’s one thing I never seen in the Klondike—a bad egg. No man’s fool enough to bring in a bad egg.”

“That’s fair,” Smoke added. “Money back for the bad ones, Wild Water. And there’s our proposition—nine thousand six hundred and twenty dollars for every egg in the Klondike.”

“You might play them up to twenty a throw an’ double your money,” Shorty suggested.

Wild Water shook his head sadly and helped himself to the beans. “That would be too expensive, Shorty. I only want a few. I’ll give you ten dollars for a couple of dozen. I’ll give you twenty—but I can’t buy ‘em all.”

“All or none,” was Smoke’s ultimatum.

“Look here, you two,” Wild Water said in a burst of confidence. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, an’ don’t let it go any further. You know Miss Arral an’ I was engaged. Well, she’s broken everything off. You know it. Everybody knows it. It’s for her I want them eggs.”

“Huh!” Shorty jeered. “It’s clear an’ plain why you want ‘em with the shells on. But I never thought it of you.”

“Thought what?”

“It’s low-down mean, that’s what it is,” Shorty rushed on, virtuously indignant. “I wouldn’t wonder somebody filled you full of lead for it, an’ you’d deserve it, too.”

Wild Water began to flame toward the verge of one of his notorious Berserker rages. His hands clenched until the cheap fork in one of them began to bend, while his blue eyes flashed warning sparks. “Now look here, Shorty, just what do you mean? If you think anything underhanded—”

“I mean what I mean,” Shorty retorted doggedly, “an’ you bet your sweet life I don’t mean anything underhanded. Overhand’s the only way to do it. You can’t throw ‘em any other way.”

“Throw what?”

“Eggs, prunes, baseballs, anything. But Wild Water, you’re makin’ a mistake. They ain’t no crowd ever sat at the Opery House that’ll stand for it. Just because she’s a actress is no reason you can publicly lambaste her with hen-fruit.”

For the moment it seemed that Wild Water was going to burst or have apoplexy. He gulped down a mouthful of scalding coffee and slowly recovered himself.

“You’re in wrong, Shorty,” he said with cold deliberation. “I’m not going to throw eggs at her. Why, man,” he cried, with growing excitement, “I want to give them eggs to her, on a platter, shirred—that’s the way she likes ‘em.”

“I knowed I was wrong,” Shorty cried generously, “I knowed you couldn’t do a low-down trick like that.”

“That’s all right, Shorty,” Wild Water forgave him. “But let’s get down to business. You see why I want them eggs. I want ‘em bad.”

“Do you want ‘em ninety-six hundred an’ twenty dollars’ worth?” Shorty queried.

“It’s a hold-up, that’s