The Colonel read: 

“Come to the Gold Nugget as soon as you get this, and hear something to your advantage.—­MAUDIE.”

So he had stayed away, having plenty to occupy him in helping to organise the new district.  He was strolling past the saloon the morning after the Secret Meeting, when down into the street, like a kingfisher into a stream, Maudie darted, and held up the Colonel.

“Ain’t you had my letter?”

“Oh—­a—­yes—­but I’ve been busy.”

“Guess so!” she said with undisguised scorn.  “Where’s Si McGinty?”

“Reckon he’s out at the gulch.  I’ve got to go down to the A. C. now and buy some grub to take out.”  He was moving on.

“Take where?” She followed him up.

“To McGinty’s gulch.”

“What for?”

“Why, to live on, while my pardner and I do the assessment work.”

“Then it’s true!  McGinty’s been fillin’ you full o’ guff.”  The Colonel looked at her a little haughtily.

“See here:  I ain’t busy, as a rule, about other folks’ funerals, but—­” She looked at him curiously.  “It’s cold here; come in a minute.”  There was no hint of vulgar nonsense, but something very earnest in the pert little face that had been so pretty.  They went in.  “Order drinks,” she said aside, “and don’t talk before Jimmie.”

She chaffed the bartender, and leaned idly against the counter.  When a group of returned stampeders came in, she sat down at a rough little faro-table, leaned her elbows on it, sipped the rest of the stuff in her tumbler through a straw, and in the shelter of her arms set the straw in a knot-hole near the table-leg, and spirited the bad liquor down under the board.  “Don’t give me away,” she said.

The Colonel knew she got a commission on the drinks, and was there to bring custom.  He nodded.

“I hoped I’d see you in time,” she went on hurriedly—­“in time to warn you that McGinty was givin’ you a song and dance.”

“Hey?”

“Tellin” you a ghost story.”

“You mean—­”

“Can’t you understand plain English?” she said, irritated at such obtuseness.  “I got worried thinkin’ it over, for it was me told that pardner o’ yours—­” She smiled wickedly.  “I expected McGinty’d have some fun with the young feller, but I didn’t expect you’d be such a Hatter.”  She wound up with the popular reference to lunacy.

The Colonel pulled up his great figure with some pomposity.  “I don’t understand.”

“Any feller can see that.  You’re just the kind the McGintys are layin’ for.”  She looked round to see that nobody was within earshot.  “Si’s been layin’ round all winter waitin’ for the spring crop o’ suckers.”

“If you mean there isn’t gold out at McGinty’s gulch, you’re wrong; I’ve seen it.”

“Course you have.”

He paused.  She, sweeping the Gold Nugget with vigilant eye, went on in a voice of indulgent contempt.