ng on the unwary
on the outer wave of progress. Within the past six months he had seen
much of him, for Burleigh was full of business enterprises, had large
investments everywhere, was lavish in invitation and suggestion, was
profuse in offers of aid of any kind if aid were wanted. He had gone so
far as to say that he knew from experience how with his wealth tied up
in real estate and mines a man often found himself in need of a few
thousands in spot cash, and as Folsom was buying and building, if at any
time he found himself a little short and needed ten or twenty thousand
say, why, Burleigh's bank account was at his service, etc. It all
sounded large and liberal, and Folsom, whose lot for years had been cast
with a somewhat threadbare array of army people, content with little,
impecunious but honest, he wondered what manner of martial man this was.
Burleigh did not loudly boast of his wealth and influence, but impressed
in some ponderous way his hearers with a sense of both. Yet, ever since
that run to Warrior Gap, a change had come over Burleigh. He talked more
of mines and money and showed less, and now, only yesterday, when the
old man's heart had mellowed to him because he had first held him wholly
to blame for Dean's arrest and later found him pleading for the young
fellow's release, a strange thing had happened. Burleigh confided to him
that he had a simply fabulous opportunity--a chance to buy out a mine
that experts secretly told him was what years later he would have called
a "bonanza," but that in the late sixties was locally known as a
"Shanghai." Twenty-five thousand dollars would do the trick, but his
money was tied up. Would Folsom go in with him, put up twelve thousand
five hundred, and Burleigh would do the rest? Folsom had been bitten by
too many mines that yielded only rattlesnakes, and he couldn't be lured.
Then, said Burleigh, wouldn't Folsom go on his note, so that he could
borrow at the bank? Folsom seldom went on anybody's note. It was as bad
as mining. He begged off, and left Burleigh disappointed, but not
disconcerted. "I can raise it without trouble," said he, "but it may
take forty-eight hours to get the cash here, and I thought you would be
glad to be let in on the ground floor."

"I've been let in to too many floors, major," said he. "You'll have to
excuse me." And so Burleigh, with his Louisiana captain, had driven off
to the fort, where Newhall asked for Griggs and was importunate, nor di