re
gaping spaces between the buttons. And for a belt she wore a wide blue
ribbon very much creased and soiled, as if she had used it for a long
while as a hair bow.

She sat down upon a rock and watched Casey distractedly bungle his
cooking. She must have had a great deal of initiative for a squaw, for she
plunged straight into the subject which most nearly concerned Casey, and
she was frank to the point of appalling him with her bluntness. Casey is a
rather case-hardened bachelor, but I suspect that Lucy Lily scared him
from the beginning.

"Do you like me when I have pretty dress on?" she inquired, smoothing the
red silk complacently over her knees.

Casey swears that he told her it didn't make a darn bit of difference to
him what she wore. If that is the truth, Lucy Lily must have been very
stupid or very persistent, for she went on blandly stating her plans and
her dearest wish.

"That gold mine I am keeping for my husband," she announced. "It is a
present for a wedding gift for my man. I shall not marry an Indian man. I
am too pretty and I have a gold mine, and I will marry a white man.
Indians don't know what money is good for. I want to live in a town and
wear silk dresses all the time every day and ride in a red automobile and
have lots of rings and go to shows. Have you got lots of money?"

I don't know what Casey told her. He says he swore he hadn't a nickel to
his name.

"I think you have got lots of money. I think perhaps you are rich. I don't
see white men walk in the desert with silk shirts and have lots of jam and
pickles if they are not rich. I think you want that gold mine awful bad.
You gave Jim lots of jam so he would tell you. White men want lots of more
money when they have got lots of money. It is like that in shows. If a man
is poor he don't care. If a man is rich he is hunting all the time for
more money and killing people. So I think you are like them rich mans in
shows."

Casey told her again that he was poor; but she couldn't have believed
him,--not in the face of all the silk and sweets he had displayed.

"I am awful glad Jim is dead. Now you have gave me the things. We will go
to Tonopah and you will buy a red automobile and we will ride in it. And
you will buy me lots of silk and rings. I shall be a lady like a princess
in a show."

"Your mother has got something to say about that gold mine," Casey blurted
desperately. "It's hers by rights. She'd have to go fifty-fifty on it.
Sh