"We could sell this mine, Hy, if we only put our profits in the right place."

"Yes," says I. "This is a likely outfit around here to stick a gravel-bank on, ain't it? Good old Alder Gulch people, and folks from down Arizony way, and the like of that! Suppose you tried it on Uncle Peters, for instance--d'ye know what he'd say? Well, this 'ud be about the size of it: 'Unh, unh! Oh, man! Oh, dear me! That ain't no way to salt a mine, Ag! No, no! You'd oughter done this, and that--that's the way we used to do in Californy--nice weather, ain't it? No, thanks--I don't care to buy no placer mines--lots of country left yet for the taking up of it--it's a mighty good mine, I admit--you'd better keep it.' That's what he'd say."

Ag combed his whiskers with his fingers. "I don't think we could close out to Uncle Peters," says he.

"And if you tried some of the rest of 'em, they'd walk on your frame for insulting their intelligence. Perhaps you was thinking of inviting Pioche Bill Williams up to take a look at the ground?"

"Well, no," says Aggy, slowly. "I don't think I'd care to irritate Bill--he's mighty careless with firearms."

"I should remark. I ain't a cautious man myself in some ways, and I've met a stack of fellers that was real liberal in their idees, but for a man that takes no kind of interest in what comes afterward, give me Pioche Bill. Oh, no, Aggy, we don't sell any placer mines in these parts."

"I tell you what," says Ag. "Let's go up to town. Stands to reason there must be a mut or two up there--somebody just dying to go out and haul wealth out of the soil."

"We're a good advertis.e.m.e.nt for the business. We look horrible prosperous, don't we?" says I.

The main deck of Ag's pants was made of a flour sack. I had a pretty decent pair, but my coat was one-half horse blanket and the other half odds and ends. Ag had a long-tailed coat he used to wear when he was doing civil engineering jobs.

"We could fix one man out fairly well," says he.

"Yes; and the other would look like the losing side of a scarecrow revolution."

"Wait a minute," says he, "I'm thinking." So he sat and twisted his whiskers and whistled through his teeth.

"I've got it!" says he. "The whole business right down to the dot!

Darned if it ain't the best scheme I ever lit on! Here's what happened to us: We're two honest prospectors that have been gophering around this country for years, never touching a colour, grub running low, and--well, there ain't any use bothering with that part now. I can think it up when the time comes. Here's the cream of the plant. We've had such a darn hard time of it that when at last, under the extraordinary circ.u.mstances which I have recounted before, we light on the almost undiluted gold of the Golden Queen, your mind is so weakened that you can't stand the strain of prosperity. You're haunted with delusions that you're still a poor man, and I can't keep any decent clothes on you--fast as I buy 'em you tear 'em up. Now I'm willing to sell the Golden Queen for the merely nominal sum of--what shall we strike 'em for? Five hundred? For five hundred dollars, then, so I can get out of this country to some place where my poor pardner will receive good medical treatment."

"And I'm the goat?" says I. "Well, I expected that. But do you expect anybody's going to swallow that guff? It's good. Ag, it would do fine in a newspaper, but can you find a man to trade five hundred hard iron dollars for it?"

Aggy drew himself up mighty proud. "I'll tell you what I've done in my day," says he, "I've made an intelligent man believe that the first story I told him wasn't so. Can you beat it?"

"I know you, Ag," says I. Then we had to slide down and see if we could get a small loan off Uncle Peters, for we didn't have enough dust to finance salting our sand-bank and pay for a trip to town, too. Ag would have it that we must do our turn for the old man. "It'll amuse him," says he, "and he's more likely to come forward." Truth of the matter was, when Aggy got one of his fine idees, he had to let the neighbourhood in.

Well, sir, Uncle Peters was that pleased he forked over a cartridgeful without weighing it. My play was to look melancholy, and tear a slit in my clothes once in a while. I had to just make believe that part when we was rehearsing for the old man, as there wasn't enough material to be extravagant with.

So up to town we goes, and if you ever see a picture of hard luck on two feet, it was me.

"I'm going to strike for a gambling joint," says Ag. "You take a tin-horn gam, and he knows everything, and that's just the kind of man I'm looking for."

So when we hit town, Ag sails into the Palace Dance Emporium, where they had the games running in the middle of the place between the lunch counter and the bar. He had nerve, had Agamemnon G. Jones.

"Hy," says he, "you'll have to watch the play a little. Mebbe you'd ought to change some, just as it happens. I'll have to do my lying according to the way the circ.u.mstances fall, so keep your eye peeled, and whatever you do, do it from the bottom of your heart. I can fix it so long as you don't queer me by shacking along too easy."

So saying he fixes the new necktie he'd bought down at the corner, tilts the new hat a little, and braces ahead. He could look more dressed up on 20 cents' worth of new clothes than some men could with a whole store behind 'em.

When we got into the place the folks gazed at us. Aggy was leading me by the hand.

"There," says he, very gentle. "Now sit down, and I'll tell you a story by and by."

I tore a hole in the coat, and mumbled to myself, and sat down according to directions.

Then Aggy walks up to where the stud-poker game was blooming.

"Gentlemen," says he, making them a bow, "I trust it won't inconvenience you any to have my poor unfortunate pardner in your midst for awhile? I can't desert him, and I do like to play a little cards now and then."

"What's the matter with him?" asks the dealer.

Ag taps his head.

"Violent?" asks the dealer.

Now, Ag didn't know just how he wanted to have it, so he didn't commit himself to nothing.

"Oh, I can always handle him," says he.

"Well, come right in," says the dealer. "They're only a dollar a stack."

"Well," says Ag, "I'll just invest in $10 worth to pa.s.s away the time--you take dust, don't you?"

"I used to say I wouldn't take anybody's dust," says the dealer, being funny with such a good customer, "but since I've struck this country I've found I've gotter."

Ag pulls out the old buckskin sack, that would hold enough to support quite a family through the winter. It was stuffed with gravel stones.

"Oh, here!" says he, whilst he was fumbling with the strings. "No use to open that--I've got another package--what you might call small change." Then he digs up Uncle Peters' cartridge sh.e.l.l.

I want to tell you I had my own troubles keeping my face together while Ag was doing his work. You never see any such good-natured, old-fashioned patriarch as he was. When they beat him out of a hand he'd laugh fit to kill himself.

"You're welcome, boys!" he'd say. "There's plenty more of it."

At the same time, you wouldn't live high on all you could make out of Aggy on a stud-poker game. He was playing 'em right down to cases, yet the way he talked, he seemed like the most liberal cuss that ever threw good money away. Of course, they had to ask him about his pardner and the rest of it whilst the cards were being shuffled, and a few inquiring remarks drew the whole sad story out of Ag.

"It's mighty tough," says he; "Hy's a fine-looking feller, when he's dressed decent; but the sight of new clothes on himself makes him furious; he foams and rips till he's tore them to gun-wadding."

"Where did you say this here claim of yours was?" asks the dealer.

"Up on Silver Creek--just below Murphy's b.u.t.te," answers Ag politely.

Then that dealer put in a lot of foxy questions making poor, innocent, unsuspecting Aggy give himself dead away. He told how there wasn't time to look for a buyer that would pay the proper price and he wouldn't know where to look anyhow, so he'd have to take the first man that offered, even if he didn't get no more than five hundred for the claim.

The dealer breathed hard and fairly shuffled the spots off the cards.

"Now," says he, "I sympathise with you--I understand just how you feel about your pardner. I'm the same kind of man myself, that way. If I had a pardner in difficulties, I wouldn't mind what I lost on it so long's I could fix him up."

Here's where I nearly choked to death, for if any man could get the price of a meal off that tinhorn, without sitting on his chest and feeding him the end of a six-shooter, his face was one of the meanest tricks a deserving man ever had sprung on him.

"So if I was you," continued the dealer, "I'd get him out of this country quick, and as for your claim, why, I don't mind if I held you out on that myself," says he. "I don't want no mines; I wouldn't bother with it, only I see you're a good, kind-hearted man, and it's my motto that such people ought to be encouraged. Now, what do you say if we start for a look at the territory this afternoon? Nothing like doing things up while you are at it." Aggy kind of scratched his head as if this hurry surprised him. "I didn't just think of letting it go so sudden," said he. "You know I'm kind of attached to the place."

"That's all foolishness," says the dealer. "Your poor pardner there wants attention--you can see that--and I don't believe you're the sort of man to let him go on suffering when there ain't no need of it."