.
I hope not."

"It isn't a matter of hoping any longer. He's here," calmly announced
his leader.

"Here! On the ground?"

"Yes."

"But--he can't be here without us knowing it."

"I'm telling you that I do know it."

"Have you seen him yourself?" demanded the treasurer incredulously.

"Seen him, talked with him, cursed him and cuffed him," announced
Ridgway with a reminiscent gleam in his eye.

"Er--what's that you say?" gasped the astounded Eaton.

"Merely that I have already met Simon Harley."

"But you said--"

"--that I had cursed and cuffed him. That's all right. I have."

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company leaned back with his
thumbs in the armholes of his fancy waistcoat and smiled debonairly at
his associate's perplexed amazement.

"Did you say--CUFFED him?"

"That's what I meant to say. I roughed him around quite a
bit--manhandled him in general. But all FOR HIS GOOD, you know."

"For his good?" Eaton's dazed brain tried to conceive the situation of
a billionaire being mauled for his good, and gave it up in despair. If
Steve Eaton worshipped anything, it was wealth. He was a born
sycophant, and it was partly because his naive unstinted admiration had
contributed to satisfy his chief's vanity that the latter had made of
him a confidant. Now he sat dumb before the lese-majeste of laying
forcible hands upon the richest man in the world.

"But, of course, you're only joking," he finally decided.

"You haven't been back twelve hours. Where COULD you have seen him?"

"Nevertheless I have met him and been properly introduced by his wife."

"His wife?"

"Yes, I picked her out of a snow-drift."

"Is this a riddle?"

"If it is, I don't know the answer, Steve. But it is a true one,
anyhow, not made to order merely to astonish you."

"True that you picked Simon Harley's wife out of a snow-drift and
kicked him around?"

"I didn't say kicked, did I?" inquired the other, judicially. "But I
rather think I did knee him some."

"Of course, I read all about his marriage two weeks ago to Miss Aline
Hope. Did he bring her out here with him for the honeymoon?"

"If he did, I euchred him out of it. She spent it with me alone in a
miner's cabin," the other cried, malevolence riding triumph on his face.

"Whenever you're ready to explain," suggested Eaton helplessly. "You've
piled up too many miracles for me even to begin guessing them."

"You know I was snow-bound, but you did not kno