“I tell you honestly, gentlemen, this seems more or less like a joke to
me--and that being the case I’ll sell cheap.”
“It’s really worth par--or it will be in time, I’m sure,” stated the
mayor, in honest fashion. “We are under great obligations to you, sir,
and we don’t want to take advantage of you in any way.”
“And I feel just that same way toward you, gentlemen,” I assured them.
“There’s always the element of a gamble in mining, I’m sure, though I
don’t know much about it. Your mine may flush out. I’ll tell you
what I’ll do--I’ll meet you on a half-way basis. I’ll sell for half
price--fifty cents on a dollar. Give me ten thousand dollars and you own
the stock.”
They stepped aside and conferred.
“I suppose you’ll be in town a few days longer!” suggested the mayor.
“If I can get out of here to-night I want to go. I must go.”
“I say again, we don’t want to take any advantage of you because you
are obliged to leave in such a hurry. This may seem like queer talk for
business men to make--to offer more than the price asked. But we want
you to remember that Breed City is grateful.”
“I really am not asking for any presents,” I said.
That was jackass talk for me to make, and I knew it. Lord! we needed all
the money we could scrape. But a funny sort of pride swelled up in me.
I did not propose to be outdone in politeness. Never had I had municipal
attentions shown to my humble self before I came to Breed City. They did
not realize all the good it had done me.
“This is no proposition of that sort,” declared the mayor. “But we are
so sure of Newell’s judgment that we know we shall make big profits on
this stock. There are six of us. We propose to give you twelve thousand
dollars, so that the amount you have paid for the stock will be handed
back to you also. We’d like you to remember that Breed City was good to
you to the extent of ten thousand dollars’ clear profit.”
That asinine pride was prompting me to split the difference with them.
But across the street just then I saw the old judge peering about,
evidently in a panic of anxiety about me because I had been gone so
long with all that money. Another memory jogged me at that moment. I
was morally bound to hand Dodovah Vose some profit on his five hundred
dollars. Haggling with those enthusiastic citizens of Breed would be
feeding my fool pride at the expense of two old men.
“It’s a trade, gentlemen, with all thanks to you!”
The mayor was president of the bank and I guess the rest were directors;
at any rate, the cashier, in about two minutes, was asking me how I
would have it!
I asked for currency--big bills. I had a boyish, eager hankering to lug
the money to the judge, to show it to him, to have him count it and
feel it and know that he could face the taxpayers of Levant, even if he
couldn’t satisfy all his creditors. But even bankruptcy, thought I,
was not State prison; my uncle would be cheated out of that part of his
revenge. My fingers itched and my eyes shone while the cashier nipped at
the comers of the bills with moistened fingers. He wrapped them in oiled
paper and I sunk them carefully in my clothes!