Ma Pettengill. Harry Leon Wilson
the animals will be as affectionate as kittens by that time through having been kindly handled, which is all a whale needs. He says they really got a very social nature and are loyal unto death. Once a whale is your friend, he says, it's for life, rain or shine, just so long as you treat him square. Even do a whale a favour just once and he'll remember your face, make no difference if it's fifty years; though being the same, it is true, in his hatreds, because a whale never forgives an injury. A sailor he happens to know once give a whale he had made friends with a chew of tobacco just for a joke and the animal got into an awful rage and tried to tear the ship down to get at him, and then he followed the ship all over the world waiting for this sailor to fall off or get wrecked or something, till finally the hunted man got so nervous he quit the sea and is now running a news stand in Seattle, if Safety don't believe it. It just goes to show that a whale as long as you're square with him is superior in mind and morals to a steer, which ain't got sense enough to know friend from foe.
Safety still shakes his head. He says "safe and sane" has been his motto throughout a long and busy life and this here proposition don't sound like neither one to him. The boys tell him he's missing a good thing by not throwing in with us. They say I'm giving 'em each a big block of stock, paid up and non-assessable, and they don't want him to come round later when they're rolling in wealth and ask why they didn't give him a chance too.
"I can just hear you talk," said Sandy. "You'll be saying: 'I knew that whole fool bunch when not one ever had a dollar he could call his own the day after he was paid off, and now look at 'em—throwing their hundreds of thousands right and left; houses with pianos in every room; new boots every week; silver-mounted saddles at a thousand each; choice wines, liquors, and cigars; private taxicabs; and Alexander J. Sawtelle, the wealthy banker, being elected to Congress by an overwhelming majority!' That's the way you'll be talking," said Sandy, "with regret eating into your vitals like some horrible acid that is fatal to man and beast."
Safety says he thinks they're all plumb crazy, and a fool and his money is soon parted—this being a saying he must have learned at the age of three and has never forgotten a word of—and he comes up to the house to see me. Mebbe he wanted to find out if I had really lost my mind, but he said nothing about whales. Just set round and talked the usual hard luck. Been in the stock business thirty years and never had a good year yet. Nothing left of his cattle but the running gear; and his land so poor you couldn't even raise a row on it unless you went there mad; and why he keeps on struggling in the bitter clutch of misfortune he don't know. But I always know why he keeps on struggling. Money! Nothing but money. So when he got through mourning over his ruined fortunes, and feebly said something about taking some mules off my hands at a fair price, I shut him off firmly. Whenever that old crook talks about taking anything off your hands he's plotting as near highway robbery as they'll let him stay out of jail for. He was sad when I refused two hundred and fifty dollars a span for my best mules.
He went off shaking his head like he hadn't expected such inhumanity from an old friend and neighbour to one who through hard luck was now down and out.
Well, I hear no more about whales; but a circus is coming to Red Gap and old Pete, the Indian, says he must go down to it, his mind being inflamed by some incredible posters pasted over the blacksmith shop at Kulanche. He says he's a very old man and can't be with us long, and when he does take the one-way trail he wants to be able to tell his friends on the other side all about the strange animals that they never had a chance to see. The old pagan was so excited about it I let him go. And he was still more excited when he got back two days later. Yes, sir; he'd found a way to fortune.
He said I'd sure think he was a liar with a crooked tongue and a false heart, but they had an animal at that circus as big as our biggest covered mess wagon and it would weigh as much as the six biggest steers I ever shipped. It has a nose about five feet long—he was sure I wouldn't believe this part—that it fed itself with, and it carried so much meat that just one ham would keep a family like Pete's going all winter. He said of course I would think he was a liar, but I could write down to Red Gap to a lawyer, and the lawyer would get plenty of people to swear to it right in the courthouse. And so now I must hurry up and stock the place with these animals and have more meat than anybody in the world and get rich pretty quick. Forty times he stretched his arms to show me how big one of these hams would be, and he said the best part was that this animal hardly ate anything at all but a little popcorn and a few peanuts. Hadn't he watched it for hours? And if I didn't hurry others would get the idea and run prices up.
I guess Pete's commercial mind must of been engaged by hearing the boys talk about whales. He hadn't held with the whale proposition, not for a minute, after he learned they live in the ocean. He once had a good look at the ocean and he promptly said "Too much water!" But here was a land animal packing nearly as much meat as a whale, eating almost nothing, and as tame as a puppy. "I think, 'Injun how you smart!'" he says when he got through telling me all this in a very secret and important way.
I told him he was very smart indeed and ought to have a job with the Government at a dollar a year telling people to quit beef meat for the elephant. I said I was much obliged for the tip and if I ever got to going good in elephants I'd see he had a critter of his own to butcher every fall. So Pete went out with all his excitement and told the boys how I was going to stock the ranch with these new animals which was better than whales because you wouldn't have to get your feet wet. The boys made much of it right off.
In no time at all they had all the white-faces sold off and vast herds of pure-bred elephants roaming over the ranch with the Arrowhead brand on 'em. Down on the flat lands they had waving fields of popcorn and up above here they had a thousand acres of ripening peanuts; and Sandy Sawtelle, the king of the humourists, he hit on another idea that would bring in fifty thousand dollars a year just on the side. He said if a crowd come along to a ranch and bought the rancher's own hay for the sake of feeding it to his own steers they would be thought weak-minded. Not so with elephants. He said people would come from far and near and bring their little ones to buy our own peanuts and popcorn to feed our own elephants. All we needed to do was put the stuff up in sacks at a nickel a throw. He said of course the novelty might die out in time, but if he could only get the peanut-and-popcorn concession for the first three years that would be all he'd want for his simple needs of living in a swell marble house in Spokane, with a private saloon and hired help to bring him his breakfast in bed and put on another record and minister to his lightest whim. Buck Devine said he'd be able to throw his own good money right and left if he could get the ivory privilege, which is made from the horns of the elephant and is used for many useful purposes; and one of the other boys says they'll develop a good milk strain and get a dairy herd, because the milk of this noble animal ought to be fine for prize fighters and piano movers.
In about ten minutes they was doing quite a business for old Pete's benefit, and Pete very earnest about it. He says I've promised him a young animal to butcher every fall, and they tell him there ain't no meat so good as a prime young popcorn-fed elephant, and he'll certainly live high. And just then up rides old Safety First again. So they get silent and mysterious all at once and warn Pete, so Safety will hear it, not to say a word to any one. Pete looks secretive and hostile at the visitor and goes back to his woodpile. Safety naturally says what fool thing have they got into their heads now, and he supposes it's some more of that whale nonsense.
The boys clam up. They say this is nothing like whales, but a dry-land proposition too important to talk about; that I've sworn everyone to secrecy, but he'll see soon enough what it is when the big money begins to roll in. They don't mind telling him it's an African proposition of new and nourishing food, a regular godsend to the human race, but they got to keep quiet until I get my options bought up so I'll have the cream of the business.
Safety sniffs in a baffled manner and tries to worm out a hint, but they say it's a thing would go like wildfire once it got known, being so much tastier than whale meat and easier to handle, and eating almost nothing.
"Whales was pretty good," says Sandy; "but since the boss got a line on this other animal she's disposed of her whale interests for seventy-three thousand dollars."
Buck Devine says I showed him the check, that come in yesterday's mail, and let him hold it a minute so he could say he once held seventy-three thousand dollars in his hand just like