est he takes he's mostly corpse. Thar's shorely
holes in my 'skito bar."

Billy read the letter thoughtfully.

"Brooke been to see the riggings?" he asked.

"Once in December. He don't know nothin', either."

"Wonder what he wants?"

"Smells mean, eh?"

"A mean smell, Pete."

Billy had spent the week tracking down the two bad characters who had
served as witnesses to a false agreement. Their confession was now in
evidence against Brooke, in case he dared repudiate Mathson's rights as
partner, but there was no need to alarm the cargador. So Billy changed
the subject, demanding tea, and there was a fine gossip.

"Mr. O'Flynn," asked mother, "hev yew bin in love?"

"Engaged," said Billy in triumph.

"Dew tell!"

"Yes, to Madame Scotson's nurse over in England."

"Does she patch your socks?"

"Now, mother," Pete interrupted, "when you was courting me did you patch
my socks?"

"Wall, I--"

"Come to think," said the cargador, "I didn't have them, being then in
the Confederate army. But, mother, you did sure scratch my face!"

"Wall, that's no dream," said mother, bridling.

Once after his Saturday's tramp up the great hill, Pete returned looking
very old. "I axed Bolt," he explained, "about this yere partnership."

"Well?" asked mother sharply. "Well?"

"Bolt says thar's pigs with pink bows to their tails, just stretchin'
and stretchin' around his sty."

The old woman turned her back, for Pete was crying.

In April there came a rush of warmth out of the west, licking up all the
snow, save only on that high plateau where the Hundred and Spite House
seemed to wait and wait in the white silence.

The spring storms came, the rains changed to snow, the snow changed to
rain, with hail-storms, and thunder rolling over snow. The cheeky
little buttercups peeped up through the tails of the snowdrift, and
far away, below Jesse's ranch in the Fraser canyon, the Star brand mules
worshiped their old bell mare among the marigolds. The ground was bare
now about Pete's cabin, all sodden pine chips to the edge of the
rain-drenched bush, and the willow buds were bursting.

Pete sat under a roof of cedar shakes which he had built to shelter the
new "riggings." Around him in a horseshoe stood fifty complete
_aparejos_, each with coiled lash and sling rope underneath, breeching
and crupper, _sovran helmo_ and _cinchas_, sweat pad, blanket, and
_corona_, while the head-ropes strapped the _mantas_ over all. He was
rive