Jonquil takes the crew to breakfast before he leaves town. They discuss what they'll do if the Weasel (who politely declined to be interviewed for this story) keeps paying more than anyone else.
"I don't want to get into a pissing match with this guy," says Jonquil. "But if we have to, we'll pay."
Talk turns to what sort of ceiling to impose if, say, the Weasel offers $30 a pound.
"And he'll do it," says Southard. "I've never seen him back down."
"And he'll tell the pickers we've been cheating them all along," Rankin says.
"This is the dark side of this business," says Jonquil. "It's the Wild West in the woods."
More troubles: Two buyers whom Jonquil describes as "just as reviled" as the Weasel are expected to hit town today.
"It's too aggressive and dirty and out of control," he says, as his wife puts their rental car keys on the table. Time to get out of Dodge.
The Mexicans have taken Sunday off. Southard is outside anyway, and a little before midnight, three guys in their early 20s show up. They're locals, streaked with mud from hair to shoes--but their morels are clean. Rankin weighs as Southard asks the guys where they picked. They tell him up on Native lands.
"You're really not supposed to be picking up there," says Southard.
"We meet an Indian in the woods, what's he gonna do?" says one guy, who has a screaming ghoul tattooed on his forearm. "How much we got so far?"
"Seven pounds," says Rankin, and tells them to cut the stems. They immediately start to trim the other 49 pounds they've brought in, and when Rankin hands them $395, they stomp their feet and whoop and pledge that they'll be back tomorrow.
As of press time, the morel market in Tok had stabilized. The buyers for Alpine Foragers' Exchange were again paying $4 per pound, down from a high of $8. On one day they purchased 2,000 pounds, their biggest haul yet, though they were still hoping to buy four times as much at half the price.
