--"

"Sure I like it!" cried Wunpost, laughing and patting her hand, "that's
just the kind of a friend I want. But all the same, Billy, this is no
Sunday School picnic--it's more like a dog fight we're going to--and the
only way to stand off that bunch of burglars is to hit 'em with anything
you've got. You've got to grab with both hands and kick with both feet
if you want to win in this mining game; and when you try to fight honest
you're tying one hand behind you, because some of 'em won't stop at
murder. Eells and Flip Flap and their kind don't pretend to be honest,
they just get by with the law; and if you give 'em the edge they'll soak
you in the jaw the first time you turn your head."

"Well, I don't care," returned Billy, "my father is honest and nobody
ever robbed him of his claim!"

"Hooh! Who wants it?" jeered Wunpost arrogantly. "I'm talking about a
real mine. Your old man's claims are stuck up in a canyon where a flying
machine couldn't hardly go and about the time he gets his road built
another cloudburst will come along and wash it away. Oh, don't talk to
me, I _know_--I've been all along those peaks and right down past
his mine--and I tell you it isn't worth stealing!"

"And I've been up there, too, and helped pack out the ore, and I tell
you you don't know what you're talking about!"

Billy's eyes flashed dangerously as she sprang up to face him and for a
minute they matched their wills; then Wunpost laughed shortly and
stepped out into the open where the sun was just topping the mountains.

"Well all right, kid," he said, "have your own way about it. It makes no
difference to me."

"No, I guess not," retorted Billy, "or you'd find out what you were
talking about before you said that my father was a fool. His mine is
just as good as it ever was--all it needs is another road."

"Yes, and then _another_ road," chimed in Wunpost mockingly, "as
soon as the first cloudburst comes by. And the price of silver is just
half what it was when Old Panamint was on the boom. But that makes no
difference, of course?"

"Yes, it does," acknowledged Billy whose eyes were gray with rage, "but
the flotation process is so much cheaper than milling that it more than
evens things up. And there hasn't been a cloudburst in thirteen
years--but that makes no difference, of course!"

She spat it out spitefully and Wunpost curbed his wit for he saw where
his jesting was leading to. When it came to her father this
unsophi