reasonable. I bought that horse.
If the deadbeat who made the deal with me wants it back, all he has to
do is to produce the money."

Then Grenfell, who leaned on the table, drew himself up, and made a
gesture of protest. He was as ragged and unkempt as ever.

"I've been called a deadbeat, and I want it taken back," he said.
"It's slander. I'm a celebrated mineralogist and assayer. Tell you how
the deep leads run; analyze you anything. For example, we'll proceed
to put this hotel-keeper in the crucible, and see what we get. It's
thirty parts hoggish self-sufficiency, and ten parts ignorance. Forty
more rank dishonesty, and ten of insatiable avarice. Ten more of
go-back-when-you-get-up-and-face-him. Can't even bluff a drunken man.
I've no use for him."

There was a burst of applause, but Weston fancied that the
hotel-keeper's attitude was comprehensible in view of the fact that
the drunken man had a big ax in his hand. Crossing the room, he seized
Grenfell's shoulder.

"Sit down," he said sternly. "Have you sold that man my horse?"

"He has, sure," said one of the others. "Set us up the drinks
afterward. We like him. He's a white man."

"How much?" Weston asked.

"Twenty dollars."

Then the man with the ax, who appeared to feel that he was being left
out of it, swung the heavy blade.

"We want our horse!" he said. "Trot the blame thing out!"

One of the others thereupon raised a raucous voice and commenced a
ditty of the deep sea which was quite unquotable. Weston silenced him
with some difficulty and turned to the rest.

"Boys," he said, "has the man yonder spent twenty dollars on drinks
to-day?"

They were quite sure that he had not. He had, they admitted, set up a
round or two, but they were not the boys to impose upon a stranger,
and in proof of this several of them asked the hotel-keeper what he
had received from them. Then Weston turned to the latter.

"Now," he said, "we'll try to straighten this thing out, but I've no
intention of being victimized. It's quite clear that the boys don't
seem in a humor to permit that either."

"You've got us solid," one of them assured him. "All you have to do is
to sail right ahead. Burn up the blame hotel. Sling him out of the
window. Anything you like."

"Well," said Weston, addressing the hotel-keeper, "while I don't know
what your tariff is, it's quite evident to me, after what the others
have said, that my partner couldn't very well have spent more than