ll I've got. She's worth all the
dust in the Klondike." He sat down, and went on in a calmer voice. "But
that ain't no call for me to gamble ten thousand dollars on a breakfast
for her. Now I've got a proposition. Lend me a couple of dozen of them
eggs. I'll turn 'em over to Slavovitch. He'll feed 'em to her with my
compliments. She ain't smiled to me for a hundred years. If them eggs
gets a smile for me, I'll take the whole boiling off your hands."

"Will you sign a contract to that effect?" Smoke said quickly; for he
knew that Lucille Arral had agreed to smile.

Wild Water gasped. "You're almighty swift with business up here on the
hill," he said, with a hint of a snarl.

"We're only accepting your own proposition," Smoke answered.

"All right--bring on the paper--make it out, hard and fast," Wild Water
cried in the anger of surrender.

Smoke immediately wrote out the document, wherein Wild Water agreed to
take every egg delivered to him at ten dollars per egg, provided that
the two dozen advanced to him brought about a reconciliation with
Lucille Arral.

Wild Water paused, with uplifted pen, as he was about to sign. "Hold
on," he said. "When I buy eggs I buy good eggs."

"They ain't a bad egg in the Klondike," Shorty snorted.

"Just the same, if I find one bad egg you've got to come back with the
ten I paid for it."

"That's all right," Smoke placated. "It's only fair."

"An' every bad egg you come back with I'll eat," Shorty declared.

Smoke inserted the word "good" in the contract, and Wild Water sullenly
signed, received the trial two dozen in a tin pail, pulled on his
mittens, and opened the door.

"Good-by, you robbers," he growled back at them, and slammed the door.

Smoke was a witness to the play next morning in Slavovitch's. He sat,
as Wild Water's guest, at the table adjoining Lucille Arral's. Almost to
the letter, as she had forecast it, did the scene come off.

"Haven't you found any eggs yet?" she murmured plaintively to the
waiter.

"No, ma'am," came the answer. "They say somebody's cornered every egg in
Dawson. Mr. Slavovitch is trying to buy a few just especially for you.
But the fellow that's got the corner won't let loose."

It was at this juncture that Wild Water beckoned the proprietor to him,
and, with one hand on his shoulder, drew his head down. "Look here,
Slavovitch," Wild Water whispered hoarsely, "I turned over a couple of
dozen eggs to you last night. Where are they?"