all. 'Well,' he says, 'I suspected
from the assays that we might get a bit more, but if he had experts
with him you better let him have it for twelve hundred. After all,
twelve hundred dollars is a good bit of money.'

"'Twelve hundred thousand,' says Snowstorm, still grouchy.

"'Oh,' says Angus. 'In that case don't let him have it. If the shark
offers that it'll be worth more. I'll go into the mining business myself
as soon as I've done this door and the wainscoting and give them their
varnish.'

"He did so. He had the International finished in three more days, turned
down a job in the new bank building cold, and went into the mining
business just like he'd do anything else--slow and sure, yet impetuous
here and there. It wasn't a hard proposition, the stuff being there
nearly from the grass roots, and the money soon come a-plenty. Snowstorm
not only got things trimmed up but had 'em dyed black as a crow's wing
and retired to a life of sinful ease in Spokane, eating bacon and beans
and cocoanut custard pie three times a day till the doctors found out
what a lot of expensive things he had the matter with him.

"Angus not only kept on the job but branched out into other mines that
he bought up, and pretty soon he quit counting his money. You know what
that would mean to most of his race. It fazed him a mite at first. He
tried faithfully to act like a crazy fool with his money, experimenting
with revelry and champagne for breakfast, and buying up the Sans Soosy
dance hall every Saturday night for his friends and admirers. But he
wasn't gaited to go on that track long. Even Ellabelle wasn't worried
the least bit, and in fact she thought something of the kind was due his
position. And she was busy herself buying the things that are champagne
to a woman, only they're kept on the outside. That was when Angus told
her if she was going in for diamonds at all to get enough so she could
appear to be wasteful and contemptuous of them. Two thousand she give
for one little diamond circlet to pin her napkin up on her chest with.
It was her own idea.

"Then Angus for a time complicated his amateur debauchery with fast
horses. He got him a pair of matched pacing stallions that would go
anywhere, he said. And he frequently put them there when he had the main
chandelier lighted. In driving them over a watering-trough one night an
accident of some sort happened. Angus didn't come to till after his leg
was set and the stitches in--eig