"He never carries anything on him," I says, "if you're meaning something 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 for his lasting financial genius which he displays so little reticence about that it'll get into the papers and make him a marked man from coast to coast if he ain't careful. He says oh, all right, if I want to take it that way, and he'll see what he can do. Mebbe he can get fifty-five a head, which would not only give the boys a good laugh but provide a little torch money. I left 'em plotting against a man that had never been touched by any plot whatever. I resolved to remain kind of aloof from their nefarious doings. It didn't seem quite dignified for one of my standing to be mixed up in a deal so crooked--at least no more than necessary to get my share of the pickings.