“‘Maybe so,’ says I, ‘but it sounded pretty straight to me.’
“‘W. D.,’ says the King, all of a sudden, ‘I’ll give you a square deal. It ain’t often I get to talk to a white man, and I’ll give you a show for your money. It may be these constituents of mine have a few grains of gold-dust hid away in their clothes. To-morrow you may get out these goods you’ve brought up and see if you can make any sales. Now, I’m going to introduce myself unofficially. My name is Shane—Patrick Shane. I own this tribe of Peche Indians by right of conquest—single handed and unafraid. I drifted up here four years ago, and won ’em by my size and complexion and nerve. I learned their language in six weeks—it’s easy: you simply emit a string of consonants as long as your breath holds out and then point at what you’re asking for.
“‘I conquered ’em, spectacularly,’ goes on King Shane, ‘and then I went at ’em with economical politics, law, sleight-of-hand, and a kind of New England ethics and parsimony. Every Sunday, or as near as I can guess at it, I preach to ’em in the council-house (I’m the council) on the law of supply and demand. I praise supply and knock demand. I use the
