o makes
moccasins has a couple of dozen."

"All right, if you say so, Smoke. But Slavovitch seems the main squeeze.
I'll just get an iron-bound option, black an' white, an' gather in the
scatterin' first."

"All right. Hustle. And I'll tell you the scheme tonight."

But Shorty flourished the bottle. "I'm goin' to doctor up Sally first.
The eggs can wait that long. If they ain't all eaten, they won't be
eaten while I'm takin' care of a poor sick dog that's saved your life
an' mine more 'n once."

Never was a market cornered more quickly. In three days every known
egg in Dawson, with the exception of several dozen, was in the hands
of Smoke and Shorty. Smoke had been more liberal in purchasing. He
unblushingly pleaded guilty to having given the old man in Klondike City
five dollars apiece for his seventy-two eggs. Shorty had bought most of
the eggs, and he had driven bargains. He had given only two dollars an
egg to the woman who made moccasins, and he prided himself that he had
come off fairly well with Slavovitch, whose seven hundred and fifteen
eggs he had bought at a flat rate of two dollars and a half. On the
other hand, he grumbled because the little restaurant across the street
had held him up for two dollars and seventy-five cents for a paltry
hundred and thirty-four eggs.

The several dozen not yet gathered in were in the hands of two persons.
One, with whom Shorty was dealing, was an Indian woman who lived in a
cabin on the hill back of the hospital.

"I'll get her to-day," Shorty announced next morning. "You wash the
dishes, Smoke. I'll be back in a jiffy, if I don't bust myself
a-shovin' dust at her. Gimme a man to deal with every time. These blamed
women--it's something sad the way they can hold out on a buyer. The only
way to get 'em is sellin'. Why, you'd think them eggs of hern was solid
nuggets."

In the afternoon, when Smoke returned to the cabin, he found Shorty
squatted on the floor, rubbing ointment into Sally's tail, his
countenance so expressionless that it was suspicious.

"What luck?" Shorty asked carelessly, after several minutes had passed.

"Nothing doing," Smoke answered. "How did you get on with the squaw?"

Shorty cocked his head triumphantly toward a tin pail of eggs on the
table. "Seven dollars a clatter, though," he confessed, after another
minute of silent rubbing.

"I offered ten dollars finally," Smoke said, "and then the fellow told
me he'd already sold his eggs. Now tha