magazine's loaded plumb up. Guess no man
has a right to give up his life without a kick. That'll help you if
they come along--which they won't. Maybe Buck'll be along directly.
Don't shoot him down. Anyway he's got Caesar with him--so you'll know.
I'm going down to the camp."

For a second the two men looked into each other's eyes. The Padre read
the suspicion in Curly's. He also saw the unhealthy lines in his
cheeks and round his mouth. Nor could he help feeling disgusted at the
thoughts of the fortune that had come to the camp and brought all
these hideous changes in its wake.

He shook his head.

"I'm not giving you away," he said. "Guess I'll be back in an hour."

Curly nodded and moved over to one of the two chairs.

"Thanks, Padre," he said as the other passed quickly out of the room.

CHAPTER XVII

TWO POINTS OF VIEW

Beasley Melford was in a detestable mood. For one reason his miserable
bar was empty of all customers, and, for another, he knew that he was
responsible for the fact.

Had he any sense of humor, the absurdity of the thing must have forced
itself upon him and possibly helped to improve his temper. But he had
no humor, and so abandoned himself to the venomous temper that was
practically the mainspring of his life.

He cursed his absent customers. He cursed the man, Curly Saunders. He
cursed the girl whom the trouble had been about. But more than all he
cursed himself for his own folly in permitting a desire to bait Joan
Rest to interfere with his business.

In his restless mood he sought to occupy himself, and, nothing else
offering, he cleared his rough counter of glasses, plunged them into a
bucket of filthy water, and set them out to drain. Then he turned his
attention to his two oil lamps. He snuffed them with his dirty fingers
in a vain attempt to improve their miserable light. Then, seating
himself upon his counter, he lit a cheap green cigar and prepared to
wait.

"Damn 'em all anyway," he muttered comprehensively, and abandoned
himself to watching the hands of a cheap alarm clock creeping on
toward the hour of nine.

Apparently the soothing influence of his cigar changed the trend of
his thoughts, for presently he began to smile in his own unpleasant
way. He was reviewing the scene which his venom had inspired, and the
possibilities of it--at the moment delayed, but not abandoned--gave
him a peculiar sense of gratification.

He was thinking, too, of Joan Rest and so