plain, like highway robbery."

Sandy says he don't mean that; he means real Wall Street stuff, such as
one gentleman can pull on another and still keep loose; crooked, he says,
but not rough. I ask what is the idea, and Sandy says get him more and
more feverish about the vast returns from this secret enterprise. Then
we'll cut out a bunch of culls--thin stuff and runts and cripples--and
make him give about four times what they're worth on a promise to let him
into the new deal; tell him we must be rid of this stuff to make room for
the new animals, and naturally we'll favour our friends.

"There, now!" says Sandy. "I should be in Wall Street this minute, being
able to think up a coop as pernicious as that: and I would of been there,
too, only I hate city life."

"For once in the world's history," I says, "there may be a grain of
sense in your words. Only no cows in the deal. Even to defraud the old
crook I wouldn't let him have hide nor hair of a beef, not since he
worked on my feelings in the matter of them bull calves two years ago.
Mules, yes. But the cow is too worthy a beast to be mixed up in anything
sinful I put over on that profiteer. Now I'll tell you what," I says,
very businesslike: "you boys tole him along till he gets hectic enough to
take that bunch of mule runts down in the south field, and anything you
get over fifty dollars a head I'll split with you."

Sandy hollers at this. He says this bunch ain't mules but rabbits, and
that I wouldn't refuse forty a head for 'em this minute. He says even a
man expecting to be let in on a sure-thing elephant ranch would know
something wicked was meant if asked to give even as much as fifty dollars
for these insects. I tell him all very true; but this is just the margin