"Br-r-r!" Daughtry shivered. "You give me the creeps. If Ithought you really meant it, San Francisco couldn't hold me two minutes." He meditated into his beer-glass a moment, then laughed with reassurance. "No man could get that dog away from me. You see, I'd kill the man first. I'd just up an' tell 'm, as I'm tellin' you now, I'd kill 'm first. An' he'd believe me, as you're believin' me now. You know I mean it. So'd he know Imeant it. Why, that dog . . . "
In sheer inability to express the profundity of his emotion, Dag Daughtry broke off the sentence and drowned it in his beer-glass.
Of quite different type was the other person of destiny. Harry Del Mar, he called himself; and Harry Del Mar was the name that appeared on the programmes when he was doing Orpheum "time."Although Daughtry did not know it, because Del Mar was laying off for a vacation, the man did trained-animal turns for a living.
He, too, bought drinks at Daughtry's table. Young, not over thirty, dark of complexion with large, long-lashed brown eyes that he fondly believed were magnetic, cherubic of lip and feature, he belied all his appearance by talking business in direct business fashion.
"But you ain't got the money to buy 'm," Daughtry replied, when the other had increased his first offer of five hundred dollars for Michael to a thousand.
"I've got the thousand, if that's what you mean.""No," Daughtry shook his head. "I mean he ain't for sale at any price. Besides, what do you want 'm for?""I like him," Del Mar answered. "Why do I come to this joint?
Why does the crowd come here? Why do men buy wine, run horses, sport actresses, become priests or bookworms? Because they like to. That's the answer. We all do what we like when we can, go after the thing we want whether we can get it or not. Now I like your dog, I want him. I want him a thousand dollars' worth. See that big diamond on that woman's hand over there. I guess she just liked it, and wanted it, and got it, never mind the price.
The price didn't mean as much to her as the diamond. Now that dog of yours--""Don't like you," Dag Daughtry broke in. "Which is strange. He likes most everybody without fussin' about it. But he bristled at you from the first. No man'd want a dog that don't like him.""Which isn't the question," Del Mar stated quietly. "I like him.
As for him liking or not liking me, that's my look-out, and Iguess I can attend to that all right."
It seemed to Daughtry that he glimpsed or sensed under the other's unfaltering cherubicness of expression a steelness of cruelty that was abysmal in that it was of controlled intelligence. Not in such terms did Daughtry think his impression. At the most, it was a feeling, and feelings do not require words in order to be experienced or comprehended.
"There's an all-night bank," the other went on. "We can stroll over, I'll cash a cheque, and in half an hour the cash will be in your hand."Daughtry shook his head.
"Even as a business proposition, nothing doing," he said. "Look you. Here's the dog earnin' twenty dollars a night. Say he works twenty-five days in the month. That's five hundred a month, or six thousand a year. Now say that's five per cent., because it's easier to count, it represents the interest on a capital value of one hundred an' twenty thousand-dollars. Then we'll suppose expenses and salary for me is twenty thousand. That leaves the dog worth a hundred thousand. Just to be fair, cut it in half--a fifty-thousand dog. And you're offerin' a thousand for him.""I suppose you think he'll last for ever, like so much land'," Del Mar smiled quietly.
Daughtry saw the point instantly.
"Give 'm five years of work--that's thirty thousand. Give 'm one year of work--it's six thousand. An' you're offerin' me one thousand for six thousand. That ain't no kind of business--for me . . . an' him. Besides, when he can't work any more, an' ain't worth a cent, he'll be worth just a plumb million to me, an' if anybody offered it, I'd raise the price."
