Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/74

 think you river people all go crazy wit' yourselfs. I don't pay no such price! Look! Here is the market price, as by the papers reported. Twenty cents. I make but two cents a pound, if I buy your load, and the six dollars for dray—you see, I make but one cent a pound, gross, and not that, maybe, when the market go down!"

Frest read the price list.

"But you gave José Macrado twenty-four cents"

"I did not so! I paid him twenty-one cents, and I lose money by it. It was block copper, from the smelters, two hundred pounds in fifty-pound blocks. Your stuff—it must be melted, and cast, and then perhaps it is dross! I give you nineteen cents, and I make not a cent"

"Like H—l you will!" Frest retorted, turning away.

"Oh, say, Mr. Frest! I vant your business, I make it twenty—I lose money! But I make it twenty. But that is all."

Frest hesitated, and finally he accepted twenty cents. Instead of three tons, however, he had only 5,120 pounds, which brought him $1,024 instead of more than thirteen hundred as he had dreamed. It made him feel poor indeed. Two days later, while he lingered at Mendova, waiting for Delia and her