its somewhat
uncomplimentary significance, simply said, "Go on. What about him?"

"Well, ez I was sayin', he warn't in it nohow, but kept on his reg'lar
way when the boom was the biggest. Some of the boys allowed it was
mighty oncivil for him to stand off like that, and others--when he
refused a big pile for his hacienda and the garden, that ran right into
the gold-bearing ledge--war for lynching him and driving him outer the
settlement. But as he had a pretty darter or niece livin' with him,
and, except for his partickler cussedness towards mining, was kinder
peaceable and perlite, they thought better of it. Things went along like
this, until one day the boys noticed--particklerly the boys that had
slipped up on their luck--that old man Sobriente was gettin' rich,--had
stocked a ranch over on the Divide, and had given some gold candlesticks
to the mission church. That would have been only human nature and
business, ef he'd had any during them flush times; but he hadn't. This
kinder puzzled them. They tackled the peons,--his niggers,--but it was
all 'No sabe.' They tackled another man,--a kind of half-breed Kanaka,
who, except the priest, was the only man who came to see him, and was
supposed to be mighty sweet on the darter or niece,--but they didn't
even get the color outer HIM. Then the first thing we knowed was that
old Sobriente was found dead in the well!"

"In the well, sah!" said the colonel, starting up. "The well on my
propahty?"

"No," said his companion. "The old well that was afterwards shut up.
Yours was dug by the last tenant, Jack Raintree, who allowed that he
didn't want to 'take any Sobriente in his reg'lar whiskey and water.'
Well, the half-breed Kanaka cleared out after the old man's death, and
so did that darter or niece; and the church, to whom old Sobriente had
left this house, let it to Raintree for next to nothin'."

"I don't see what all that has got to do with that wandering tramp,"
said the colonel, who was by no means pleased with this history of his
property.

"I'll tell ye. A few days after Raintree took it over, he was lookin'
round the garden, which old Sobriente had always kept shut up agin
strangers, and he finds a lot of dried-up 'slumgullion'* scattered all
about the borders and beds, just as if the old man had been using it for
fertilizing. Well, Raintree ain't no fool; he allowed the old man wasn't
one, either; and he knew that slumgullion wasn't worth no more than mud
for a