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 that. And the money was to be put into this new business, with the boys being let in on the ground floor, like they had been with the whales. Sandy says that in probably a year from now, or eighteen months at the most, he won't be a thing but a dissipated millionaire. Nothing but that!
Safety is peculiar in his mind. If you told him you found a million gold dollars up in the top of that jack pine he wouldn't believe it, yet still and all he'd get a real thrill out of it. He certainly does cherish money. The very notion of it is romantic to him. And he must of been thrilled now. He hung round, listening keenly while the boys squandered their vast wealth in various reprehensible ways, trying to get some idea about the new animal. Finally he sniffed some more, and they was all crazy as loons, and went off. But where does he go but over to old Pete at the woodpile and keeps him from his work for ten minutes trying to get the new animal's name out of Pete. But he can't trap the redman into any admissions. All he can find out is that Pete is serious and excited.