rivate steamboat with a good orchestra, and a chance to be
dissolute and count your money. And look what a snap the pioneers will
have with all the mavericks; probably not a single whale in the ocean yet
branded! And does Timmins want to throw in with us? If he does mebbe they
can fix up a deal with me because I want a good business man at the head
of the new outfit.

But Safety says right off quick that it's all a pack of nonsense. He says
it's the mad dream of a visionary or feeble-minded person. He don't deny
there would be money in whales if they could be handled, but you couldn't
handle anything that had the whole ocean to swim in that covers three
quarters of the earth's surface, as he has often read. And how would you
get a branding iron on a whale, and what good would it do you? He'd beat
it out for Europe. He said they was foolish to think whales would stay in
a herd, and he guessed I'd been talking just to hear myself talk, or more
likely I'd been kidding 'em to get a good laugh.

Sandy says: "Well, I wasn't going to tell you at first, but I guess it'll
be safe with you, you being a good friend of the Arrowhead, only don't
let it go no farther; but the fact is the boss is negotiating for the
whale privilege in Great Salt Lake. Yes, sir, she's bribing the Utah
legislature this very minute to let the bill go through! And I guess that
don't look much like kidding. As soon as the governor has signed the bill
she'll put in a couple of good three-year-old bull whales and a nice
little herd of heifers and have the world's meat supply at her finger
ends in less than five years--just killing off the yearling steers."

Safety looks a bit startled at this, and Sandy goes on to say that though
whale meat is now but a fad of the idle rich it's bound to be the meat of
rich and poor alike in future. He'd bet a thousand dollars to a dime that
by the time the next war come along the first thing they'd do would be to
establish a whaleless day. He said whale meat was just that good.

Safety chewed his gum quite a time on this--he says if a man chews gum he
won't ruin himself in pocket for tobacco--and he read the whale article
over carefully and looked at the pictures again, but he still said it
didn't sound to him like a legitimate business enterprise. He said for
one thing there'd be trouble shipping the original herd up to Salt Lake.
Sandy said it was true; there would be the initial expense of loading on
to flat cars, and