LITMIR.BIZ

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he talks he's got hold of a good thing. I'm going to see."

      "And you'll go all that journey just to see!" said the other. "You trust him? You think he's a good man?"

      "Well, I don't know so much about that," admitted Stephens. "Truth to tell, the last time I saw him we had considerable of a difference of opinion; in fact we split, and we reckoned to stay split. You see, he busted me up as we call it, ruined me, that is; only I had the luck to sort of pull myself round. But that happened two years ago; all the same I don't say that I want him for a pard again, though he must have pretty well straightened himself out, the way he talks; but still, you bet, I'd like mighty well to shake hands with him, right now."

      "And he ruined you?" exclaimed the Mexican.

      "Busted me wide open. Left me flat broke," said the American.

      "How did it all happen?" asked the other. "Tell us all about it; we have heard some of your adventures, but not this. Come into the sitting-room here and let us have it."

      "Well, if it won't bore you, you're welcome," said Stephens, following his host and preparing to refill his pipe.

      "Ah, you must smoke when you talk, I know," said Sanchez, "and you wish to smoke your own American tobacco, for you do not like the flavour of our New Mexican punche in your pipe. Ho, a light here, Pedrito! quick, bring a live coal for the señor."

      Pedrito, a small son of the peon, came running from the kitchen with a live coal in a piece of hoop iron, which he offered to Stephens, pulling off his cap and standing bareheaded before the honoured guest, with old-world courtesy. Manuelita knew very well what was up, and fixed herself down to listen just by the door, where she could hear every word. Stephens settled himself down comfortably on the divan, and began.

      "I picked up with this partner, who has just written me this letter, Rockyfeller his name is, when I was up in Idaho. We took to each other kind of natural-like, and he and I pulled together as amiably as a span of old wheel-horses for a goodish bit. We were quite different sort of men, too, in ourselves; but somehow that seemed to make it all the easier for us to get along. We worked in the mines all that winter, and when spring came we had enough saved to rig out a real A1 prospecting outfit. Rocky – that's what I called him – used to spree a bit every once in a while, but nothing really to hurt, you know. He could pull up short, which is more than most men who go on the spree have sense to do. His sprees didn't prevent our saving over four hundred dollars. Then we bought two cayuses to ride – cayuses is the name they give to those broncho horses up that way, – and a good pack-mule and plenty of grub and blankets. We put in the whole of that summer prospecting off in the Cœur d'Alène country, and we staked out a lot of claims on different lodes, and we put in a good bit of work on some of 'em so as to hold 'em for the year. Well, come fall, we hadn't been able to sell any one of our claims, and we hadn't taken out any high-grade ore that would pay for packing over the mountains to any reduction works, and there we were, short of cash. So we cleared from that Cœur d'Alène country at last. It was too far from a railroad. We sold our claims for what we could get, and that wasn't much, and we lit out for Montana, and there that next summer we just did everlastingly prospect over some of the roughest country I ever ran across. The Indians were powerful bad too, to say nothing of the road-agents. But we struck it at last pretty rich on a lode that we called 'The Last Lap' – that's the last round, you know, that the horses make on a race-track. I'd spent eight mortal years chasing my tail all round the Pacific slope looking for a good lode, and here it was, after all, across on the head-waters of the Missouri in Montana. We knew we'd got a good thing. The ledge was three to five feet thick, with a nice, uniform lot of high-grade ore, and a special streak that would assay up to five hundred dollars a ton. I never saw a nicer lode. The only thing was, it was a plaguy long way from any quartz mill for the free ore, and it was a plaguy sight farther to the only reduction works that could handle the richest portions of it. Of course what the mine wanted was a smelter of its own, right on the spot, but that's what got us. We hadn't the capital to start it. It wanted at least fifty or a hundred thousand dollars laid out before we could hope to get back a cent. That mine was worth a million, if we'd had it in California, but off there, five or six hundred miles from a railroad, owned by us two prospectors who'd just about got to the end of our tether, it was too big a thing for us to handle. Well, we did what work we could on it. We sunk a shaft and ran a bit of a drift, and we went into Helena and we offered a share in it to a few capitalists we thought we could trust. None of 'em would even look at it. At last we ran on to Colonel Starr, – old Beebee Starr; likely you never heard of him, but they knew him well enough up there, – and he rode out with us to see it; and he tumbled to it, too, as soon as ever he'd grubbed out a few specimens with his own pick and had 'em assayed. Well, he wouldn't take a half-interest and find the money to develop the mine, which was what we wanted him to do, and we were stony-broke by that time except for our cayuses and our camp outfit, and winter a-coming on; and the long and short of it was that we gave Colonel Starr a quitclaim deed to our whole interest in the Last Lap Lode for twelve thousand five hundred dollars in greenbacks, paid down on the nail. The Last Lap has paid more than that much in a month in dividends since then, but that's common enough; that's how things do pan out; but I don't believe in whining over my luck, never did. And I'd been waiting eight years for a look in, and I didn't despise getting my half of the twelve thousand five hundred dollars, if the Last Lap was worth a million.

      "So we sold the best quartz mine in Montana, and that's where Rocky and I split. We got the money from Colonel Starr in greenbacks, and it was a roll as thick as my arm. And Rocky pouched it all, for I had to go out to a cabin three miles out of town to see another old pard of mine who had been crushed by a fall of rock and was dying. I know I ought never to have left Rocky with that money on him; but what was I to do? It was late in the day; I had to go; I couldn't take it along with me, for a man was liable in those days to be held up anywhere round the outskirts of town by those cursed road-agents. Rocky had kept plumb straight for over a year. I trusted him, and I went. I got back to our hotel that night about ten o'clock, and a man says to me, 'D'you know where your pard Rocky's gone?'

      "'No,' says I, 'aint he here?'

      "'Not much,' says he; 'he's at Frenchy's, bucking agi'n' the tiger.'

      "My heart felt like a lump of ice. I just turned right around and walked across the road to where this Frenchy kept a faro bank, and went in. There was Rocky, about half drunk, sitting at the table, with about three little chips on the cloth before him. I went up and put my hand on Rocky's shoulder and looked on. The dealer turned up the jack, I think it was, and raked in Rocky's stake. Rocky turns his head and looks up at me with a ghastly grin. 'Is that you?' says he; 'Jack, you'd orter hev come before. I've had a devil of a run of bad luck; I'm cleaned out.'

      "'In God's name,' says I, 'is that so?'

      "'You bet,' says he.

      "I felt as if my eyes were two big burning holes in my head. 'God forgive you, Rocky,' says I, 'for playing the giddy goat, and me for leaving you alone for one night in Helena, Montana. Come on out of this now, Rocky, and I'll divide my share with you. I never went back on a pard.'

      "Then the big blow came. 'Your share?' says he; 'why it's all gone. It's all gone, every dollar of it, and them chips you saw me lose was the end of the Last Lap Lode.' I heard some bummer behind me give a laugh, one of those whiskey-soaking galoots that think it funny to see the next man cleaned out.

      "I felt a queer lump in my throat, and I says to the banker, very solemn, 'Mr. Frenchy, this gentleman here,' I was holding my hand on Rocky, 'he's my pardner, and I must beg you to take notice that half what you've won off him is my property that he had charge of.'

      "'That's no use, young man,' says the banker to me. 'We play for keeps in this house, and so you'll find it.'

      "'We'll see about that,' says I. 'Now, Rocky, tell me, is the whole of the Last Lap gone, the whole of the twelve thousand five hundred dollars?'

      "'Every last cent,' says Rocky. I could see by his looks that he felt powerful mean.

      "'Then, mister,' says I to the banker – I was determined to be deadly civil – 'six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars of what you've took from this gentleman belongs to me.'

      "'You're interfering with the progress of the game,' says he; 'and

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