no trace of his last escapade,
he added, "I see you've got a fresh harness."

"That d--d Chinaman bought me these at the landing. They're not much in
style or fit," he continued, trying to get a moonlight view of himself
in the mirror behind the bar, "but that don't matter here." He filled
another glass of spirits, jauntily settled himself back in his chair,
and added, "I don't suppose there are any girls around, anyway."

"'Cept your wife; she was down here this afternoon," said Patterson
meditatively.

Mr. Tucker paused with the pie in his hand. "Ah, yes!" He essayed a
reckless laugh, but that evident simulation failed before Patterson's
melancholy. With an assumption of falling in with his friend's manner,
rather than from any personal anxiety, he continued, "Well?"

"That man Poindexter was down here with her. Put her in the _hacienda_
to hold possession afore the news came out."

"Impossible!" said Tucker, rising hastily. "It don't belong--that
is"--he hesitated.

"Yer thinking the creditors'll get it, mebbe," returned Patterson,
gazing at the floor. "Not as long as she's in it; no sir! Whether it's
really hers, or she's only keeping house for Poindexter, she's a
fixture, you bet. They are a team when they pull together, they are!"

The smile slowly faded from Tucker's face, that now looked quite rigid
in the moonlight. He put down his glass and walked to the window as
Patterson gloomily continued: "But that's nothing to you. You've got
ahead of 'em both, and had your revenge by going off with the gal.
That's what I said all along. When folks--specially women
folks--wondered how you could leave a woman like your wife, and go off
with a scallawag like that gal, I allers said they'd find out there was
a reason. And when your wife came flaunting down here with Poindexter
before she'd quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to see the
whole little game. No, sir! I knew it wasn't on account of the gal!
Why, when you came here to-night and told me quite nat'ral-like and
easy how she went off in the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and
drank your whiskey after it, I knew you didn't care for her. There's my
hand, Spence; you're a trump, even if you are a little looney, eh? Why,
what's up?"

Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson's words seemed like a
revelation that shocked him as profoundly as it might have shocked a
nobler nature. The simple vanity and selfishness that made him unable
to conceive any