melter, maybe--if some one would kindly
find coal.

"We want a minimum of five hundred thousand; as much more for accidents.
Where does this cousin of yours live? In Abingdon?"

"In Vesper--seven miles from Abingdon. He's a lawyer."

"Is he all right?"

"Why, yes--I guess so. When I was a boy I thought he was a wonderful
chap--rather made a hero of him."

"When you was a boy?" echoed Johnson; a quizzical twinkle assisted the
query.

"Oh, well--when he was a boy."

"He's older than you, then?"

"Nearly twice as old. My father was the youngest son of an old-fashioned
family, and I was his youngest. Uncle Roy--Oscar's father--was dad's
oldest brother, and Oscar was a first and only."

Pete shook his head.

"I'm sorry about that, too. I'd be better pleased if he was round your
age. No offense to you, Stan; but I'd name no places to your cousin if
I were you. When we get legal possession let him come out and see for
himself--leadin' a capitalist, if possible."

"Oscar's all right, I guess," protested Stan.

"But you can't do more than guess? Name him no names, then. I wish he was
younger," said Peter with a melancholy expression. "The world has a
foolish old saying: 'The good die young.' That's all wrong, Stanley. It
isn't true. The young die good!"

CHAPTER V

Something Dewing, owner of Cobre's Emporium of Chance, sat in his room in
the Admiral Dewey Hotel. It was a large and pleasant room, refitted and
over-furnished by Mr. Dewing at the expense of his fellow townsmen,
grateful or otherwise. It is well to mention here that, upon the tongues
of the scurrile, "Something," as a praise-name and over-name for Mr.
Dewing, suffered a sea change to "Surething"--Surething Dewing; just as
the Admiral Dewey Hotel was less favorably known as "Stagger Inn."

Mr. Dewing's eye rested dreamily upon the picture, much praised of
connoisseurs, framed by his window--the sharp encircling contours of
Cobre Mountain; the wedge of tawny desert beyond Farewell Gap. Rousing
himself from such contemplation, he broke a silence, sour and unduly
prolonged.

"Four o'clock, and all's ill! Johnson is not the man to be cheated out of
a fortune without putting up a fight. Young Mitchell himself is neither
fool nor weakling. He can shoot, too. We have had no news. Therefore--a
conclusion that will not have escaped your sagacity--something has gone
amiss with our little expeditionary force in the Gavilan. Johnson is
quite the Pal