Me?—sell for ten thousand dollars! No, indeed. I'll dig the gold myself, an' then I'm goin' down to God's country,—Southern California,—that's the place for me to end my declinin' days—an' then I'll start . . . as I said before, then I'll start . . . what did I say I was goin' to start?"
"Ostrich farm," Mucluc Charley volunteered.
"Sure, just what I'm goin' to start." O'Brien abruptly steadied himself and looked with awe at Mucluc Charley. "How did you know? Never said so. Jes' thought I said so. You're a min' reader, Charley. Le's have another."
Curly Jim filled the glasses and had the pleasure of seeing four dollars' worth of whiskey disappear, one dollar's worth of which he punished himself—O'Brien insisted that he drink as frequently as his guests.
"Better take the money now," Leclaire argued. "Take you two years to dig it out the hole, an' all that time you might be hatchin' teeny little baby ostriches an' pulling feathers out the big ones."
O'Brien considered the proposition and
