"I'll wait fer you, Alec," she answers. She'd gone, and I was turnin' back towards Silverstein's, when--I'm a son-of-a-gun if I didn't see, a-comin' acrosst from the deepot, one of them land-sharks! It was Porky, with that wedge-coat of hisn, and a seegar as big as a corn-cob! Say! I duv under the porch so quick that I clean scairt the life outen six razorbacks and seventeen hens that was diggin' 'round under it. And when I come out where the back door is, I skun fer Hairoil Johnson's shack to borra a dif-f'rent suit of clothes offen the parson. Next, I had my Santy Claus mowed at the barber-shop. But, when I looked in the glass, I wasn't satisfied, 'cause I wasn't changed enough. "What'll I _do?_" I ast the barber. "Wash," he says. Wal, I'll be dog-goned!--the _dis_guise was complete! Just then, in come Hank Shackleton. "Hank," I says, "what do y' think?--that fat Chicago millionaire I was a-tellin' you of is _here!_" "You don't say so!" he answers, beginnin' to grin. "That shore _is_ luck!" "How so?" ast the barber. "Why," I says, "just think what we can _do_ to him!" Hank just lent back and haw-hawed like he'd bust his buttons off. "Aw, _don't_ make me laugh," he says; "my lip's cracked!" They ain't no use talkin'--we fixed up a proposition that was a _daisy_. "And it'll work like yeast," says Shackleton. "A-course, whatever _I_ make outen it, Cupid, you git a draw-down on--yas, you do." "Nobody from Goldstone'll speak up and spoil the fun, neither," I says. "Not by a jugful! That passel of yaps down there is jealous of Briggs, and 'd just _like_ to see her done. What's more, they got a heap of little, mean pride, and 'd never own up _they_ been sold." It was shore funny, but from that _very_ minute, and all by _itself_ kinda, Briggs City begun to boom! Billy Trowbridge put a barb-wire fence 'round a couple of vacant lots next his house. Bergin dug a big hole behind that ole vacant shack of hisn, and buried about a ton of tin cans. Hairoil turned some shoats into a rock patch he owned and cleaned out the rattlesnakes. And all over town, sand got five times as high as it'd ever been afore. So when my dudey friend, the real-estate feller, struck our flourishin' city, and hired a' empty shanty fer his office, he didn't find no one anxious to sell him a slice of land. "Say! property's up here," he _re_marked, whilst he put down the stiff price that Bill Rawson 'd ast fer a lot. He seemed sorta bothered in his mind. (But he had to have land--to start his game on.) "And _climbin',_" says Bill, pocketin' the spondulix. (Later on, Bill says to _me,_ "I ain't a-goin' to do another lick of hard work this year!") Same day, here was Sam Barnes, walkin' up and down on that acre of hisn and holdin' to a forked stick. Wouldn't tell Porky _why,_ though he hinted that whenever a forked stick dipped _three_ times, _it meant somethin' more 'n water._ "But I ain't got the cash to do no investigatin'," says Sam, sad-like.