takin'
what I wanted?"

"Gold?"

The old dry cackle answered the question; the bleary eyes were bright
with cunning.

"If I don't know nothin'," jibed Honeycutt, "what're you askin' me for?"

King had learned little that he did not already know. He came back to
the table and began gathering up the money.

"Wait a minute, Mark," pleaded the old man, restless as he understood
that the glittering coins were to be taken away. "Let's talk a while.
You an' me ain't had a good chat like this for a year."

"I'm going," retorted King. "But I'll make you one last proposition." He
thrust into his pocket everything excepting five twenty-dollar gold
pieces. These he left standing in a little pile. "I'll give you just
exactly one hundred dollars for a look at what is in that box of yours."

In sudden alarm the old man shambled back to his bunk, his hands on the
bedding over the box.

"You'd grab it an' run," he clacked. "You'd rob me. You're worse than
Brodie----"

"You know better than that," King told him sternly. "If I wanted to rob
you I'd do it without all this monkey business."

In his suspicious old heart Honeycutt knew that. He battled with
himself, his toothless old mouth tight clamped.

"I'll go you!" he said abruptly. "Stand back. An' give me the money
first."

King gave him the money and drew back some three or four paces.
Honeycutt drew out the box, held it lingeringly, fought his battle all
over again, and again went down before the hundred dollars. He opened
the box upon a hinged lid; he made a smooth place in the covers; he
poured out the contents.

What King saw, three articles only, were these: an old leather pouch,
bulging, probably with coins; a parcel; and a burnished gold nugget. The
nugget, he estimated roughly, would be worth five hundred dollars were
it all that it looked from a dozen feet away. The parcel, since it was
enwrapped in a piece of cloth, might have been anything. It was shaped
like a flat box, the size of an octavo volume.

Honeycutt leered.

"If Swen Brodie had of knowed what he had right in his hands," he
gloated, "he'd never of let go! Not even for a shotgun at his head!"

"Brodie hasn't gone far. He'll come back. You have your last chance to
talk business with me, Honeycutt. Brodie will get it next time."

"Ho! Will he? Not where I'm goin' to hide it, Mark King. I got another
place; a better place; a place the old hell-sarpint himself couldn't
find."

* *