the corner of the
railroad hotel into view of more mountains that lay to the south. "You
stay here to-morrow," he pursued, swiftly, "and I'll hitch up and drive
you over there. I'll show you some rock behind Helen's Dome that'll beat
any you've struck in the whole course of your life. It's on the wood
reservation, and when the government abandons the Post, as they're going
to do--"

There is no need for my entering at length into his urgence, or the
plans he put to me for our becoming partners, or for my buying him out
and employing him on a salary, or buying him out and employing some
other, or no one, according as I chose--the whole bright array of
costumes in which he presented to me the chance of making my fortune at
a stroke. I think that from my answers he gathered presently a
discouraging but perfectly false impression. My Eastern hat and
inexperienced face (I was certainly young enough to have been his
grandchild) had a little misled him; and although he did not in the
least believe the simple truth I told him, that I had come to Arizona on
no sort of business, but for the pleasure of seeing the country, he now
overrated my brains as greatly as he had in the beginning despised them,
quite persuaded I was playing some game deeper than common, and either
owned already or had my eye upon other silver mines.

"Pleasure of seeing the country, ye say?" His small wet eyes blinked as
he stood on the railroad track bareheaded, considering me from head to
foot. "All right. Did ye say ye're going to Globe?"

"No. To San Carlos to visit an army officer."

"Carlos is on the straight road to Globe," said Mr. Mowry, vindictively.
"But ye might as well drop any idea of Globe, if ye should get one. If
it's copper ye're after, there's parties in ahead of you."

Desiring, if possible, to shift his mind from its present unfavorable
turn, I asked him if Mr. Adams did not live between here and
Solomonsville, my route to Carlos. Mr. Adams was another character of
whom my host had written me, and at my mention of his name the face of
Mr. Mowry immediately soured into the same expression it had taken when
he spoke of the degraded Jenks.

"So you're acquainted with him! He's got mines. I've seen 'em. If you
represent any Eastern parties, tell 'em not to drop their dollars down
old Adams's hole in the ground. He ain't the inexperienced juniper he
looks. Him and me's been acquainted these thirty years. People claim it
was Cyclone Bi