rever. "Aw, come
off!" he began, in what he meant to be jocular tones. "Quit your
fooling and let me up! I've swallowed a bucket of blood already!"

"Will you take it back, or shall I pummel the stuffing out of you?"

Billiard capitulated. "I take it back," he said sullenly, "but,"--as
Toady removed his knees from his chest and allowed him to rise--"I'll
get even with you for this."

"All right," responded the younger boy cheerfully. "But don't forget
that you will get what's coming to you, too."

"Don't be so sure, sonny! You took me off guard; you know you did, or
you'd never have laid me out. You weren't fair."

Toady, tasting his first victory over his bully brother, and finding it
very sweet, suggested casually, "I'll scrap _you_ any time you say.
Now, if you like."

"My head aches too bad," said the other hastily. "That was a nasty
place to fall. It's a wonder it didn't fracture my skull."

Toady looked back at the spot which Billiard had adorned a moment
before, and remorse overtook him. "I'm sorry, old chap, if I hurt
you," he said contritely. "I wasn't aiming to put you out of business,
but you made me so all-fired mad----"

"Aw, forget it! I was just fooling," protested Billiard, shamed by
Toady's frank and manly confession. "Say, ain't that the haunted house
the girls are always talking about?"

"Which? Maybe 'tis. It's the last one in town, they said. Mercy
promised to point it out the next time we climbed the trail behind the
house. Do you s'pose it really is haunted?"

"I dunno," Billiard answered indifferently.

Haunted houses in his opinion were things to be avoided. He had merely
sought to distract Toady's thoughts from their fistic encounter by
mentioning the place. But the younger boy's curiosity was aroused, and
as they neared the deserted, unpainted, dilapidated hut, he studied it
closely. To him it looked like any other untenanted shack in the
mining town, and so he said musingly, "I wonder if that man really did
kill himself there, or was he murdered?"

Billiard shivered. "Mercedes said he _died_ there. That's all I know."

"She told me he was _found_ dead, with all his pockets turned inside
out, and----"

"Oh, Toady," interrupted Billiard again, "here's a plant just like
those mamma always has in her garden. I didn't s'pose things like that
would grow here on the desert."

"That's a castor bean."

"Like they make castor oil of?"

"Sure! At least, I gu