Short Stories
all too impossible to be real. And yet there they blazed on the
table before him, fanning the flame of the lust of him, and he
giggled again.
"I guess we might as well count 'em," Matt said suddenly,
tearing himself away from his own visions. "You watch me an'
see that it's square, because you an' me has got to be on the
square, Jim. Understand?"
Jim did not like this, and betrayed it in his eyes, while Matt
did not like what he saw in his partner's eyes.
"Understand?" Matt repeated, almost menancingly.
"Ain't we always teen square?" the other replied, on the de-
fensive, what of the treachery already whispering in him.
"It don't cost nothin', bein' square in hard times," Matt re-
torted. "It's bein' square in prosperity that counts. When we
ain't got nothing we can't help bein' square. We're prosperous
now, an' we've got to be business men--honest business men.
Understand?"
"That's the talk for me," Jim approved, but deep down in
the meagre soul of him, and in spite of him, wanton and law-
less thoughts were stirring like chained beasts.
Matt stepped to the food shelf behind the two-burner kero-
sene cooking stove. He emptied the tea from a paper bag, and
from a second bag emptied some red peppers. Returning to the
table with the bags, he put into them the two sizes of small dia-
monds. Then he counted the large gems and wrapped them in
their tissue paper and chamois skin.
"Hundred an' forty-seven good-sized ones," was his invento-
ry "twenty real big ones; two big boys and one whopper; an' a
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