t, I don't say it means much to anybody but me. I've
heard of these warnings afore now, ez comin' only to folks ez hear them
for themselves alone, and I reckon I kin stand it, if it's the will o'
God. The idea is then--that--Spencer Tucker--WAS DROWNDED in that boat;
the idea is"--his voice was almost lost in a hoarse whisper--"that it
was no living man that kem to me that night, but a spirit that kem out
of the darkness and went back into it! No eye saw him but mine--no ears
heard him but mine. I reckon it weren't intended it should." He paused,
and passed the flap of his hat across his eyes. "The pie, you'll say, is
agin it," he continued in the same tone of voice,--"the whiskey is agin
it--a few cuss words that dropped from him, accidental like, may have
been agin it. All the same they mout have been only the little signs and
tokens that it was him."

But Mrs. Baxter's ready laugh somewhat rudely dispelled the infection
of Patterson's gloom. "I reckon the only spirit was that which you and
Spencer consumed," she said, cheerfully. "I don't wonder you're a little
mixed. Like as not you've misunderstood his plans." Patterson shook
his head. "He'll turn up yet, alive and kicking! Like as not, then,
Poindexter knows where he is all the time."

"Impossible! He would have told me," said Mrs. Tucker, quickly.

Mrs. Baxter looked at Patterson without speaking. Patterson replied by a
long lugubrious whistle.

"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Tucker, drawing back with cold
dignity.

"You don't?" returned Mrs. Baxter. "Bless your innocent heart! Why was
he so keen to hunt me up at first, shadowing my friends and all that,
and why has he dropped it now he knows I'm here, if he didn't know where
Spencer was?"

"I can explain that," interrupted Mrs. Tucker, hastily, with a blush of
confusion. "That is--I--"

"Then mebbe you kin explain too," broke in Patterson with gloomy
significance, "why he has bought up most of Spencer's debts himself, and
perhaps you're satisfied it ISN'T to hold the whip hand of him and keep
him from coming back openly. Pr'aps you know why he's movin' heaven and
earth to make Don Jose Santierra sell the ranch, and why the Don don't
see it all."

"Don Jose sell Los Cuervos! Buy it, you mean?" said Mrs. Tucker. "I
offered to sell it to him."

Patterson arose from the chair, looked despairingly around him, passed
his hand sadly across his forehead, and said: "It's come! I knew it
would. It's the w