a few p'inted questions. Will ye answer, eh?"

"Sure," she told him lightly, whacking her gum for emphasis. "Come and
pour your heart out to me, Uncle--I'll listen."

Lucy had taken more of the well-filled buckskin poke that the old man
had pulled from the neck of his greasy shirt to pay her for the pastime.

She leaned out and craned her neck to watch him moving up the street,
glancing through doors and openly investigating on every side.

Her intuition told her that the gray old rat had something on his mind.
Lonely old soul that he was, she reasoned, he was bashful and at a loss
how to conduct himself in the unfamiliar presence of a woman. "When
he's all gowed up he'll talk my head off," she decided. "He's going to
fortify himself now. Guess I'll have to look into this."

When the bent, plodding figure had disappeared through the entrance to
Ghost Falcott's Palace Dance Hall, Lucy called across the street to a
boy sitting on the edge of the new board sidewalk. The boy crossed to
her and she handed him a dime.

"Find Al Drummond and tell him I want to see him at once," she directed.

A little later Al Drummond presented himself. His face showed the
effects of a sleepless night, but he was already refortified with
jackass brandy for the ordeals of the day, and was in nowise stupid.

They leaned on the carpeted counter, heads close together, and talked
in lowered voices.

"What this old bird has got on his chest I can't tell," Lucy explained.
"But I played up to him, and if he gets all gowed up he'll spill it.
He's crazy as they make 'em, Al. It may not amount to anything at all,
but I'm for always lookin' into such little things. You never can
tell, Al. Maybe this'll be good. Anyway, he's got a leather bag
that's heavy with jack, and he won't need that when he hits the trail
again. Warm up to him and get 'im started, then steer him to me."

"Wise little kid," Al Drummond commented. "Leave it to me."

The male plotter experienced no difficulty in finding the grizzled
desert rat. He was evidently a self-starter, having brought his own,
and, all alone at Ghost Falcott's bar, he was pouring raw jackass
brandy down a throat that seemed urgently in need of it. Seeing that
he was satisfactorily working out his own destruction, Drummond shot
craps to divert himself until the prospector should become mellowed to
a point where it was safe to approach him.

It seemed though that the old man had an enorm