the
erstwhile owners of crap that I'm trying to buy, so I smiled and nodded and
examined the 78 player she had produced. In lariat script, on the top, it said,
"Official Bob Wills Little Record Player," and had a crude watercolour of Bob
Wills and His Texas Playboys grinning on the front. It was the kind of record
player that folded up like a suitcase when you weren't using it. I'd had one as
a kid, with Yogi Bear silkscreened on the front.

Billy's mom plugged the yellowed cord into a wall jack and took the 78 from me,
touched the stylus to the record. A tinny ukelele played, accompanied by
horse-clops, and then a narrator with a deep, whisky voice said, "Howdy,
Pardners! I was just settin' down by the ole campfire. Why don't you stay an'
have some beans, an' I'll tell y'all the story of how Hopalong Cassidy beat the
Duke Gang when they come to rob the Santa Fe."

In my head, I was already breaking down the cowboy trunk and its contents,
thinking about the minimum bid I'd place on each item at Sotheby's. Sold
individually, I figured I could get over two grand for the contents. Then I
thought about putting ads in some of the Japanese collectors' magazines, just
for a lark, before I sent the lot to the auction house. You never can tell. A
buddy I knew had sold a complete packaged set of Welcome Back, Kotter action
figures for nearly eight grand that way. Maybe I could buy a new truck. . .

"This is wonderful," Craphound said, interrupting my reverie. "How much would
you like for the collection?"

I felt a knife in my guts. Craphound had found the cowboy trunk, so that meant
it was his. But he usually let me take the stuff with street-value -- he was
interested in _everything_, so it hardly mattered if I picked up a few scraps
with which to eke out a living.

Billy's mom looked over the stuff. "I was hoping to get twenty dollars for the
lot, but if that's too much, I'm willing to come down."

"I'll give you thirty," my mouth said, without intervention from my brain.

They both turned and stared at me. Craphound was unreadable behind his goggles.

Billy's mom broke the silence. "Oh, my! Thirty dollars for this old mess?"

"I will pay fifty," Craphound said.

"Seventy-five," I said.

"Oh, my," Billy's mom said.

"Five hundred," Craphound said.

I opened my mouth, and shut it. Craphound had built his stake on Earth by
selling a complicated biochemical process for non-chlorophyll photosynthesis to
a Saudi banker.