makes his living by selling bum
life insurance. Phillip F. Lapham is his name but we all call him Flip
Flappum--he's the black-leg lawyer that drew up that contract that made
me lose my mine. Did Dusty tell you about it--then he told you a lie--I
never even read the cussed contract! I was broke, to tell you the truth,
and I'd have signed my own death warrant to get the price of a plate of
beans; and so I put my name in the place where he told me and never
thought nothing about it.

"It was a grubstake, that's all I knew, giving him half of what I staked
in exchange for what I could eat; but it turned out afterwards it was
like these fire insurance policies, where a man never reads the fine
print. There was more jokers in that contract than in a tinhorn
gambler's deck of cards--he had me peoned for life--and after I'd given
him half my strike he came out and claimed it all. Well, no man would
stand for that but when I went to make a kick there was a rat-faced
guard there waiting for me. Pisen-face Lynch they call him, and if he
was half as bad as he looks he'd be the wild wolf of the world; but he
ain't, not by a long shot, he just had the drop on me, and he run me off
my own claim! I came back and they ganged me and when I woke up I looked
like I'd been through a barbed-wire fence.

"Well, after that, as the nigger says, I began to think they didn't want
me around there, and so I pulled my freight; and it wasn't a month
afterwards that the ore all pinched out and left Judson Eells belly up.
If he lost one dollar I'll bet he lost fifty thousand, besides tipping
his hand on that contract; and I walked clean back from the lower end of
Death Valley just to see how his lip was hung. He's a big, fat slob, and
when times are good he goes around with his lip pulled up, so! But this
time he looked like an old muley cow that's come through a long, late
spring--his lip was plumb down on his brisket. So I gave him the
horse-laugh, paid my regards to Flip and Lynch, and came away feeling
fine. Because I'll tell you Billy, sure as God made little fishes,
there's a hereafter coming to them three men; and I'm the boy that's
going to deal 'em the misery--you wait, and watch my smoke!"

He smiled benevolently into Billy's startled eyes, and as the subject
seemed to interest her he settled himself more comfortably and proceeded
with his views on life.

"Yes sir," he said, "I'll put a torch under them, that'll burn 'em off
the face of