''You can't keep bad spirits away from money,' says I.
''They say,' goes on McClintock, 'the Yacuma fool them. They raise plenty row.'
''Going! Going!' says I. 'Gold-dust or cash takes the entire stock. The dust weighed before you, and taken at sixteen dollars the ounce-- the highest price on the Gaudymala coast.'
'Then the crowd disperses all of a sudden, and I don't know what's up. Mac and me packs away the hand- mirrors and jewelry they had handed back to us, and we had the mules back to the corral they had set apart for our garage.
'While we was there we hear great noises of shouting, and down across the plaza runs Patrick Shane, hotfoot, with his clothes ripped half off, and scratches on his face like a cat had fought him hard for every one of its lives.
''They're looting the treasury, W. D.,' he sings out. 'They're going to kill me and you, too. Unlimber a couple of mules at once. We'll have to make a get-away in a couple of minutes.'
''They've found out,' says I,' the truth about the law of supply and demand.'
''It's the women, mostly,' says the King. 'And they used to admire me so!'
''They hadn't seen looking-glasses then,' says I.
''They've got knives and hatchets,' says Shane; 'hurry !'
''Take that roan mule,' says I. 'You and your law of supply! I'll ride the dun, for he's two knots per hour the faster. The roan has a stiff knee, but he may make it,' says I. 'If you'd included reciprocity in your political platform I might have given you the dun,' says I.
'Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules and rode across the rawhide bridge just as the Peches reached the other side and began firing stones and long knives at us. We cut the thongs that held up our end of the bridge and headed for the coast.'
A tall, bulky policeman came into Finch's shop at that moment and leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch nodded at him friendly.
'I heard down at Casey's,' said the cop, in rumbling, husky tones, 'that there was going to be a picnic of the Hat-Cleaners' Union over at Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is that right?'
'Sure,' said Finch. 'There'll be a dandy time.'
'Gimme five tickets,' said the cop, throwing a five-dollar bill on the showcase.
'Why,'' said Finch, 'ain't you going it a little too--'
'Go to h--!' said the cop. 'You got 'em to sell, ain't you? Somebody's got to buy 'em. Wish I could go along.'
I was glad to See Finch so well thought of in his neighborhood.
And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.
'Mamma says,' she recited shrilly, 'that you must give me eighty cents for the grocer and nineteen for the milkman and five cents for me to buy hokey-pokey with--but she didn't say that,' the elf concluded, with a hopeful but honest grin.
Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I noticed that the total sum that the small girl received was one dollar and four cents.
'That's the right kind of a law,' remarked Finch, as he carefully broke some of the stitches of my hatband so that it would assuredly come off within a few days--'the law of supply and demand. But they've both got to work together. I'll bet,' he went on, with his dry smile, 'she'll get jelly beans with that nickel--she likes 'em. What's supply if there's no demand for it?'
'What ever became of the King?' I asked, curiously. ''Oh, I might have told you,' said Finch. 'That was Shane came in and bought the tickets. He came back with me, and he's on the force now.'
There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called upon specifically to rise?
I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops--parted soon with my money in many ways. But there remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof- prints of King Midas none has found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise.
But, going back from my theme a while--as lame pens must do--I was a fool of the sentimental soft. I saw May Martha Mangum, and was hers. She was eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano, beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a small, dull, Texas prairie-town. She had a spirit and charm that could have enabled her to pluck rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium or any other sporty kingdom, but she did not know it, and I did not paint the picture for her.
You see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have and to hold. I wanted her to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings.
May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling 'em names.
He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized her highly as a fine specimen of the racibus humanus because she saw that he had food at times, and put his clothes on right side before, and kept his alcohol-bottles filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be absent- minded.
There was another besides myself who thought May Martha Mangum one to be desired. That was Goodloe
