covers someone who speaks his tongue.

Harrah appeared about Bruce's age, perhaps a year or two older, and he
was as tall, though lacking Bruce's thickness and breadth of shoulder.
His arms were long as a gorilla's and he had huge white fists with
freckles on the back that looked like ginger-snaps. Fiery red eyebrows
as stiff as two toothbrushes bristled above a pair of vivid blue eyes,
while his short beard resembled nothing so much as a neatly trimmed
whisk broom, flaming in color. His skin was florid and his hair, which
was of a darker shade than his beard, was brushed straight back from a
high, white forehead. A tuft of hair stood up on his crown like the
crest on a game-cock. Everything about him indicated volcanic
temperament, virility, and impulsiveness which amounted to eccentricity.

Harrah represented to Bruce practically his last chance, but there was
nothing in Harrah's veiled, non-committal eyes as he motioned Bruce to a
chair and inquired brusquely: "Well--what kind of a wild-cat have _you_
got?" which would have led an observer to wager any large amount that
his last chance was a good one.

Bruce's eyes opened and he stared for the fraction of a second at the
rudeness of the question, then they flashed as he answered shortly.

"I'm not peddling wild-cats, or selling mining stock to widows and
orphans--if you happen to be either."

Capital is not accustomed to tart answers to its humor caustic, from
persons in need of financial assistance for their enterprises. Harrah
raised his toothbrush eyebrows and once more he favored Bruce with a
sweeping glance of interest, which Bruce, in his sensitive pride,
resented.

"Who sent you?" Harrah demanded roughly.

"Never mind who sent me," Bruce answered in the same tone, reaching for
his hat which he had laid on the floor beside him, "but he had his
dog-gone nerve directing me to an ill-mannered four-flusher like you."

The color flamed to Harrah's cheek bones and over his high, white
forehead.

"You've got a curious way of trying to raise money," he observed. "I
suppose," dryly, "that's what you're here for?"

"You suppose right," Bruce answered hotly as he stood up, "but I'm no
damn pauper. And get it out of your head," he went on as the accumulated
wrath of weeks swept over him, "that you're talking to the office boy.
I've found somebody at last that's big enough to stand up to and tell
'em to go to hell! Sabe? You needn't touch my proposition, you need