l and he could sit around and wait a life-time--but waiting
was not his long suit. In Los Angeles he seemed to attract all the
bar-flies in the city, who swarmed about and bummed him for the drinks;
and no man could stand their company for more than a few days without
getting thoroughly disgusted. And on the desert, every time he went out
into the hills he was lucky to come back with his life. So what was he
to do, while he was waiting around for this banker to find out he was
whipped?

For Eells was whipped, he was foiled at every turn; and yet that
muley-cow lip came up as stubbornly as ever and he tried to tell him,
Wunpost, he was wrong. And that because he was wrong and a law-breaker
at heart he was therefore a coward and doomed to lose. It was ludicrous,
the way Eells stood up for his "rights," when everyone knew he was a
thief; and yet that purse-proud intolerance which is the hall-mark of
his class made him think he was entirely right. He even had the nerve to
preach little homilies about trying to evade the law. But that was it,
his very self-sufficiency made him immune against anything but a club.
He had got the idea into his George the Third head that the king can do
no wrong--and he, of course was the king. If Wunpost made a threat, or
concealed the location of a mine, that was wrong, it was against the
law; but Eells himself had hired some assassins who had shot him,
Wunpost, twice, and yet Eells was game to let it go before the
sheriff--he could not believe he was wrong.

Wunpost cursed that pride of class which makes all capitalists so hard
to head and put the whole matter from his mind. He had hoped to come
back with that contract in his pocket, to show to the doubting
Wilhelmina; but she had had enough of boasting and if he was ever to win
her heart he must learn to feign a virtue which he lacked. That virtue
was humility, the attribute of slaves and those who are not born to
rule; but with her it was a virtue second only to that Scotch honesty
which made upright Cole Campbell lean backwards. He was so straight he
was crooked and cheated himself, so honest that he stood in his own
light; and to carry out his principles he doomed his family to Jail
Canyon for the rest of their natural lives. And yet Wilhelmina loved him
and was always telling what he said and bragging of what he had done,
when anyone could see that he was bull-headed as a mule and hadn't one
chance in ten thousand to win. But all the sa