why, I don't guess there's
anything else to it but a straight business proposition."

"So you netted the ten thousand?" enquired Bud, in his simplest fashion.

"Me? Gee! Say, if them ten thousand dollars had wafted my way I'd
have set this city crazy drunk fer a week. No, sir," he added, with a
coldly gloomy shake of the head. "That's jest about the pain I'm
sufferin' right now. Some mighty slick aleck's helped hisself to them
dollars, an' I don't know who--nor does anybody else, 'cep' him who
paid 'em."

Bud realized the man's shameless earnestness, but passed it by. He was
seeking information. It was what he and Jeff had come for. The manner
of this man was coldly callous, and he knew that every word he uttered
was a lash applied to the bruised soul of the man by the window.
Irresistible sympathy made him turn about.

"Here's your lager, Jeff," he said, in his easiest fashion. He had no
desire that Ju should be made aware of the trouble that Jeff was
laboring under.

Jeff replied at once. His readiness and even cheerfulness of manner
surprised Bud. But it relieved him as well.

"Bully!" he cried, as he came back to the bar. "I was just gettin' a
look around at the--city." He turned to Ju with his shadowy smile
which almost broke Bud's heart. "Quite a place, eh?"

"Place? Wal, it's got points I allow. So's hell ef you kin look at it
right." Ju lit a cigar and hid nearly half of it in his capacious
mouth. "I'd say," he went on, with a certain satisfaction, "ther's
more mush-headed souses in this lay out to the square yard than I've
ever heard tell of in any other city. Ef it wa'an't that way I
couldn't see myself wastin' a valuable life lookin' at grass, hearin'
talk of grass, smellin' grass, an' durned nigh eatin' grass. I tell
you right here it takes me countin' my legs twice a day to keep me from
the delusion I got four, an' every time I got to shake my head at some
haf soused bum who's needin' credit I'm scared to death my blamed
ears'll start right in flappin'. Why, yes, I guess it's some place--if
you don't know no other."

Bud was eager to get to the end of the task he had assumed for his
friend. He wanted the facts, all the facts as far as they were
available, of the terrible enactments in that valley of his early youth.

"An' who antied the price?" he demanded.

"Who? Why, the President of the Western Union Cattle Breeders'
Association--Dug McFarlane."

"And you don't know w