tin dishes with a clatter. "Now then,
old Greedy! Break the news to me."

Pete considered young Stan through half-closed lids--a tanned,
smooth-faced, laughing, curly-headed, broad-shouldered young giant.

"You got any enemies, pardner?"

"Not one in the world that I know of," declared Stan cheerfully.

"Back in New York, maybe?"

"Not a one. No reason to have one."

Pete shook his head reflectively.

"You're dreadful dumb, you know. Think again. Think hard. Take some one's
girl away from him, maybe?"

"Not a girl. Never had but one Annie," said Stanley. "I'm her Joe."

"Ya-as. Back in New York. I've posted letters to her: Abingdon P.O. Name
of Selden."

Stanley went brick red.

"That's her. I'm her Joe. And when we get this little old bonanza of ours
to grinding she won't be in New York any more. Come again, old-timer.
What's all this piffle got to do with our mine?"

"If you only had a little brains," sighed Johnson disconsolately, "I'd
soon find out who had it in for you, and why. It's dreadful inconvenient
to have a pardner like that. Why, you poor, credulous baa-lamb of a
trustful idiot, when you let me go off to file them papers, don't you see
you give me the chance to rob you of a mine worth, just as she stands,
'most any amount of money you chance to mention? Not you! You let me ride
off without a misgivin'."

"Pish!" remarked Stan scornfully. "Twaddle! Tommyrot! Pickles!"

Pete wagged a solemn forefinger.

"If you wasn't plumb simple-minded and trustin' you would 'a' tumbled
long ago that somebody was putting a hoodoo on every play you make. I
caught on before you'd been here six months. I thought, of course, you'd
been doin' dirt to some one--till I come to know you."

"I thank you for those kind words," grinned Mitchell; "also, for the
friendly explanation with which you cover up some bad luck and more
greenhorn's incompetence."

"No greenhorn could be so thumbhandsided as all that," rejoined Pete
earnestly. "Your irrigation ditches break and wash out; cattle get into
your crops whenever you go to town; but your fences never break when
you're round the ranch. Notice that?"

"I did observe something of that nature," confessed Mitchell. "I laid it
to sheer bad luck."

The older man snorted.

"Bad luck! You've been hoodooed! After that, you went off by your
lonesome and tried cattle. Your windmills broke down; your cattle was
stole plumb opprobrious--Mexicans blamed, of course. And the