“Were you?” said King.  “And Baldy Winch, the one who knifed you——?”

The sucking old mouth emitted a dry chuckle.

“An’ didn’t I keep my promise?  That very winter after Baldy was the only man to git back.  With my side just healin’ didn’t I make my way through the snow out to where he was——­”

“His cabin on Lookout?”

“With an axe I got there!  An’ him havin’ a gun an’ pistol an’ knife.  Phoo!  What good did it do him?  An’ didn’t I square with him by takin’ what I wanted?”

“Gold?”

The old dry cackle answered the question; the bleary eyes were bright with cunning.

“If I don’t know nothin’,” jibed Honeycutt, “what’re you askin’ me for?”

King had learned little that he did not already know.  He came back to the table and began gathering up the money.

“Wait a minute, Mark,” pleaded the old man, restless as he understood that the glittering coins were to be taken away.  “Let’s talk a while.  You an’ me ain’t had a good chat like this for a year.”

“I’m going,” retorted King.  “But I’ll make you one last proposition.”  He thrust into his pocket everything excepting five twenty-dollar gold pieces.  These he left standing in a little pile.  “I’ll give you just exactly one hundred dollars for a look at what is in that box of yours.”

In sudden alarm the old man shambled back to his bunk, his hands on the bedding over the box.

“You’d grab it an’ run,” he clacked.  “You’d rob me.  You’re worse than Brodie——­”

“You know better than that,” King told him sternly.  “If I wanted to rob you I’d do it without all this monkey business.”

In his suspicious old heart Honeycutt knew that.  He battled with himself, his toothless old mouth tight clamped.

“I’ll go you!” he said abruptly.  “Stand back.  An’ give me the money first.”

King gave him the money and drew back some three or four paces.  Honeycutt drew out the box, held it lingeringly, fought his battle all over again, and again went down before the hundred dollars.  He opened the box upon a hinged lid; he made a smooth place in the covers; he poured out the contents.

What King saw, three articles only, were these:  an old leather pouch, bulging, probably with coins; a parcel; and a burnished gold nugget.  The nugget, he estimated roughly, would be worth five hundred dollars were it all that it looked from a dozen feet away.  The parcel, since it was enwrapped in a piece of cloth, might have been anything.  It was shaped like a flat box, the size of an octavo volume.

Honeycutt leered.

“If Swen Brodie had of knowed what he had right in his hands,” he gloated, “he’d never of let go!  Not even for a shotgun at his head!”

“Brodie hasn’t gone far.  He’ll come back.  You have your last chance to talk business with me, Honeycutt.  Brodie will get it next time.”

“Ho!  Will he?  Not where I’m goin’ to hide it, Mark King.  I got another place; a better place; a place the old hell-sarpint himself couldn’t find.”