The Golden Woman

Beasley's eyes opened wide. In a moment he had forgotten his ill-humor.

From the gold spread out before him he looked up into the other's face with a half-suspicious, wholly incredulous stare.

"You got that from your claim--to-day?" he asked.

"An' wher' in hell else?"

"Sure!" Beasley fingered the precious nuggets lovingly. "Gee! Ther's nigh five hundred dollars there."

"Fi' hundred--an' more," cried Ike anxiously.

But Beasley's astonishment was quickly hidden under his commercial instincts. He would have called them "commercial."

"We'll soon fix that," he said, setting the scales.

Ike leant against the bar watching the man finger his precious ore as he placed each of the six nuggets in the scale and weighed them separately. He took the result down on paper and worked their separate values out at his own market prices. In five minutes the work was completed, and the man behind the bar looked up with a grin.

"I don't gener'ly make a bad guess," he said blandly. "But I reckoned 'em a bit high this journey. Ther's four hundred an' seventy-six dollars comin' to you--ha'f cash an' ha'f credit. Is it a deal?"

The other's face flamed up. A volcanic heat set him almost shouting.

"To hell!" he cried fiercely. "Ther's fi' hundred dollars ther' if ther's a cent. An' I want it all cash."

Beasley shook his head. He had this boy's exact measure, and knew just how to handle him.

"The scales don't lie," he said. "But ther', it's the way wi' youse fellers. You see a chunk o' gold an' you don't see the quartz stickin' around it. Here, I'll put a hundred an' seventy-six credit an' the rest cash. I can't speak fairer."

He drew a roll of bills from his hip-pocket and began counting the three hundred out. He knew the sight of them was the best argument he could use. It never failed. Nor did it do so now.

Ike grumbled and protested in the foulest language he was capable of, but he grabbed the dollars when they were handed to him, and stowed them into his hip-pocket with an eagerness which suggested that he feared the other might repent of his bargain. And Beasley quickly swept the precious nuggets away and securely locked them in his safe, with the certain knowledge that his profit on the deal was more than cent for cent.

"You'll take rye," he said as he returned his keys to his pocket. "An' seein' it's your good day, an' it's on me, we'll have it out o' this thirteen-year-old bottle."

He pushed the bottle across the counter and watched Ike pour himself out a full "four fingers." The sight of his gluttony made Beasley feel glad that the thirteen-year-old bottle had been replenished that morning from the common "rot-gut" cask. After their drink he became expansive.