amed it
all on the Widow. Without warning or justification, without even giving
him a chance, she had sneaked up and potted him like a rabbit; and now,
as men came running to witness his shame, she gloried in her badness.

"Aha-ah!" she jeered, coming back to stand over him and Wiley reached
for a stone.

"You old she-cat," he burst out, "you say another word to me and I'll
bounce this rock off your head!"

He groaned and dropped the rock to take his leg in both hands, and then
Virginia rushed to the rescue.

"How badly are you hurt?" she asked, kneeling down beside him, but he
jerked ungraciously away.

"Go away and leave me alone!" he shouted to the world at large and the
Widow took the hint to withdraw. Then in a series of frenzied curses
Wiley stripped off his puttee and felt of his injured leg. It was wet
with blood and two shot-holes in his shin-bone were giving him the most
exquisite pain; the rest were just flesh-wounds where the buckshot had
pierced his leggings and imbedded themselves in the muscles. He looked
them over hastily by the light of a flashing lantern and then he rose up
from the ground.

"Gimme that gun for a crutch!" he demanded of the Widow; and Mrs. Huff,
who had been surveying her work with awe, passed over the shotgun in
silence. "All right, now," he went on, turning to Death Valley Charley,
who had been patiently holding his lantern, "just show me the trail and
I'll get out of camp before some crazy dastard ups and kills me."

"That was Stiff Neck George," observed Charley mysteriously. "He's
guarding the Paymaster for Blount."

"Who--that fellow that was after me?" burst out Wiley in a passion as he
hobbled off down the trail. "What the hell was he trying to do? The
whole rotten mine isn't worth stealing from anybody. What's the matter
with you people--are you crazy?"

"Well, that's all right!" returned the Widow from the darkness. "You
can't sneak in and jump _my_ mine!"

"_Your_ mine, you old tarrier!" yelled Wiley furiously. "You'd
better go to town and look it up. The whole danged works is mine--I
bought it in for taxes!"

"You--what?" cried the Widow, brushing Virginia and Charley aside and
halting him in the trail. "You bought the Paymaster for _taxes_!"

"Yes, for taxes," answered Wiley, "and got stung at that! Gimme
eighty-three dollars and forty-one cents and you can have it back,
with costs. But now listen, you old battle-ax; I've taken enough off
of you. You went u