ortunate young man in one of the newer mining towns along his
exciting route.

"He was kind of nursin' a feller that had the consumption," ran the
gossip of Mr. Webster, "some one he'd fell in with out in them parts,
that had gone there to git cured. But, High Mighty! the way them two
carried on at all hours wasn't goin' to cure no one of nothin'!
Specially gamblin', which was done right in public, you might say,
though the sharpers never skinned me none, I'll say that! But these two
was at it every night, and finally they done just like I told the young
fools they'd do--they lost all they had. They come into the Commercial
House one night where I was settin' lookin' over a time-table, both
seemin' down in the mouth. And all to once this sick young man--Mr.
Hoover, his name was--bust out cryin'--him bein' weak or mebbe in liquor
or somethin'.

"'Every cent lost!' he says, the tears runnin' down those yellow, sunk
cheeks of his. But Bernal seems to git chipper again when he sees how
Mr. Hoover is takin' it, so he says, 'Haven't you got a cent left,
Hoover? Haven't you got anythin' at all left? Just think,' he says,
'what I stood to win on that last turn, if it'd come my way--at four to
one,' he says, or somethin' like that; them gamblin' terms is too much
for me. 'Hain't you got nothin' at all left?' he says.

"Then this Hoover--still cryin', mind you--he says, 'Not a cent in the
world except forty dollars in my trunk upstairs that I saved out to bury
me with--and they won't send me another cent,' he says, 'because I tried
'em.'

"It sounded awful to hear him talkin' like that about his own buryin',
but it didn't phase Bernal none.

"'Forty dollars!' he says, kind of sniffy like. 'Why, man, what could
you do for forty dollars? Don't you know such things are very outrageous
in price here? Forty _dollars_--why,' he says, 'the very best you could
do would be one of these plain pine things with black cloth tacked on to
it, and pewter trimmin's if _any_,' he says. 'Think of _pewter_
trimmin's!'

"'Say,' he says, when Hoover begun to look up at him, 'you run and dig
up your old forty and I'll go back right now and win you out a full
satin-lined, silver-trimmed one, polished mahogany and gold name-plate,
and there'll be enough for a clock of immortelles with the hands stopped
at just the hour it happens,' he says. 'And you want to hurry,' he says,
'it ought to be done right away--with that cough of yours.'

"Me? Gosh,