kes nearly everything and piles
it up down in his warehouse. It isn't his, of course, but----"

"He hauls it off in a wheelbarrow," broke in Charley, virtuously. "He
don't care what he does. They was a widow woman here whose daughter got
sick and she had to go out for a week, and when she came back----"

"Yes, her whole house was looted--he carried off even her
sewing-machine!"

"And a deep line of wheelbarrow tracks," added Charley, unctuously,
"leading from her house right down to his. She nailed up all her windows
before she went, but he----"

"Yes, he broke in," supplied the Widow. "He's a desperate character
and everybody is afraid of him, so he can do whatever he pleases; but
you bet your life he can't run it over me--I filled him up with
buckshot twice. Oh--that is--er--did you ever hear how he got his head
twisted? Well, go right ahead now and eat up your toast. I asked him
one time--that was before we'd had our trouble--what was the cause of
his head being to one side. He looks, you know, for all the world like
he was watching for a good kick from behind; but he tried to appear
pathetic and told me a long story about saving a mother and her child
in a flood. And when it was all over, according to him, he fell down
in a faint in the mud; but the best accounts I get say he was dead
drunk in the gutter and woke up with his head on one side."

She ended with a sniff and Wiley glanced at Charley, but he was staring
blankly away.

"I don't like that man," spoke up Charley at last, "he kicked my dog,
one time."

"And he bootlegs something awful," added the Widow, desperately, for
fear that the chatter would lag. "There doesn't a day go by but some
drunken Piute comes whooping up the road, and that bunch of
Shooshonnies----"

"Yes, he sells to the bucks," observed Death Valley, slyly. "They're no
good--they get drunk and tell. But you can trust the squaws--I had one
here yesterday----"

"You what?" shrieked the Widow, and Charley looked up startled, then
rose and whistled to his dog.

"Go lay down!" he commanded and slapped him till he yelped, after which
he slipped fearfully away.

"The very idea!" exclaimed the Widow frigidly and then she glanced at
Wiley.

"Mr. Holman," she began, "I came out here to talk business--there's
nothing round-the-corner about me. Now what about this tax sale, and
what does Blount mean by allowing you to buy it in for nothing?"

"Well, I don't know," answered Wiley. "He r