stud-poker game. He was playing 'em right down to cases, yet
the way he talked, he seemed like the most liberal cuss that ever threw
good money away. Of course, they had to ask him about his pardner and
the rest of it whilst the cards were being shuffled, and a few
inquiring remarks drew the whole sad story out of Ag.

"It's mighty tough," says he; "Hy's a fine-looking feller, when he's
dressed decent; but the sight of new clothes on himself makes him
furious; he foams and rips till he's tore them to gun-wadding."

"Where did you say this here claim of yours was?" asks the dealer.

"Up on Silver Creek--just below Murphy's butte," answers Ag politely.

Then that dealer put in a lot of foxy questions making poor, innocent,
unsuspecting Aggy give himself dead away. He told how there wasn't
time to look for a buyer that would pay the proper price and he
wouldn't know where to look anyhow, so he'd have to take the first man
that offered, even if he didn't get no more than five hundred for the
claim.

The dealer breathed hard and fairly shuffled the spots off the cards.

"Now," says he, "I sympathise with you--I understand just how you feel
about your pardner. I'm the same kind of man myself, that way. If I
had a pardner in difficulties, I wouldn't mind what I lost on it so
long's I could fix him up."

Here's where I nearly choked to death, for if any man could get the
price of a meal off that tinhorn, without sitting on his chest and
feeding him the end of a six-shooter, his face was one of the meanest
tricks a deserving man ever had sprung on him.

"So if I was you," continued the dealer, "I'd get him out of this
country quick, and as for your claim, why, I don't mind if I held you
out on that myself," says he. "I don't want no mines; I wouldn't
bother with it, only I see you're a good, kind-hearted man, and it's my
motto that such people ought to be encouraged. Now, what do you say if
we start for a look at the territory this afternoon? Nothing like
doing things up while you are at it." Aggy kind of scratched his head
as if this hurry surprised him. "I didn't just think of letting it go
so sudden," said he. "You know I'm kind of attached to the place."

"That's all foolishness," says the dealer. "Your poor pardner there
wants attention--you can see that--and I don't believe you're the sort
of man to let him go on suffering when there ain't no need of it."

"No," says Aggy, thoughtfully, "that's so."