chief in her eye and interrupted himself
with a question.

"He's coming," announced Billy, showing the dimples in both cheeks and
Dusty Rhodes let his jaw drop.

"Who's coming?" he asked but she dimpled enigmatically and jerked her
curly head towards the road. They started up to look and as the white
mule rounded the point Dusty Rhodes blinked his eyes uncertainly. After
all his talk about the faithless and cowardly Wunpost here he was,
coming up the road; and the memory of a canteen which he had left
strapped upon a pack, rose up and left him cold. Talk as much as he
would he could never escape the fact that he had gone off with Wunpost's
big canteen, and the one subject he had avoided--why he had not stopped
to wait for him--was now likely to be thoroughly discussed. He glanced
about furtively, but there was no avenue of escape and he started off
down to the gate.

"Where you been all the time?" he shouted in accusing accents, "I've
been looking for you everywhere."

"Yes, you have!" thundered Wunpost dropping down off his mule and
striding swiftly towards him. "You've been lapping up the booze, over at
Blackwater! I've a good mind to kill you, you old dastard!"

"Didn't I tell you not to stop?" yelled Rhodes in a feigned fury. "You
brought it all on yourself! I thought you'd gone back----"

"You did not!" shouted Wunpost waving his fists in the air, "you saw me
behind you all the time. And if I'd ever caught up with you I'd have
bashed your danged brains out, but now I'm going to let you live! I'm
going to let you live so I can have a good laugh every time I see you go
by--Old Dusty Rhodes, the Speed King, the Wild Ass of the Desert, the
man that couldn't stop to get rich! I was running along behind you
trying to make you a millionaire but you wouldn't even give me a drink!
Look at _that_, what I was trying to show you!"

He whipped out a rock and slapped it into Rhodes' hand but Dusty was
blind with rage.

"No good!" he said, and chucked it in the dirt at which Wunpost stooped
down and picked it up.

"You're a peach of a prospector," he said with biting scorn and stored
it away in his pocket.

"Let me look at that again," spoke up Dusty Rhodes querulously but
Wunpost had spied the ladies. He advanced to the porch, his big black
hat in one hand, while he smoothed his towsled hair with the other, and
the smile which he flashed Billy made her flush and then go pale, for
she had neglected to change back to