“You’ll lose your money!” warned Mitchell.  “Then you’ll say I took advantage of you.”

“I know what you think,” said Steve shrewdly. “You think I’m drunk, but I’m not. I know a good thing when I see it.  Don’t you—­don’t you lose no sleep about me.  I’m—­I’m all right, you bet!  Now what’ll you do or take water?” he fleered.

Surreptitiously Loring had tried the coin with his penknife during this controversy.  The metal was quite soft—­the knife left a great scar, which he flashed at Mitchell.

“Well—­if you insist,” said Mitchell reluctantly.  He counted out ten one-thousand-dollar bills.  “Who’ll be the judge?”

“Anybody.  Archie.  I’ve got you skinned a mile anyway.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Thompson,” said Archibald, “but this dollar seems to be pewter, or something of that general description.  Aw, give him back his money, Mitchell—­he’s drinking.

“I won’t!” said Mitchell stubbornly.  “He forced me into it.  He wouldn’t have given it back to me if I’d lost.”

“Sure I wouldn’t,” assented Steve.  “I’m no boy. I play for keeps, me.  Don’t be so fast, if you please.  This money ain’t won yet.  Cut into that dollar!  I was from Missouri before ever I saw Montana.”

“Cut it, Loring,” said Mitchell.  “Show him!”

Loring scratched it with the penknife point.  “You see? soft as cheese—­rotten,” he said.  And then the knife struck something hard.  A chill crept over him.  Stupefied, he scraped the base metal back, revealing a portion of an irrefutably good dollar.

The dismayed rascals looked up.  In Thompson’s hand a large, businesslike gun wavered portentously from one head to the other.

“Go on!” he admonished.  His tone was not particularly pleasant.  “Peel her off!  Yah!  You puling infants!  You cheap, trading-stamp crooks!” He raked off the money.  “Be tran-tranquil!  You doddering idiots, I’d shoot your heads off for two bits I Try to rob a countryman, will you?  Why, gentle shepherds all, I’ve been on to such curves as yours ever since Hec was a pup!  You and your scout Loring and your Bickford and your Post!” he scoffed.  “Don’t open your heads.  Bah!  Here, you skunks!” He threw an ostentatiously bad dollar on the table.  “Take that, and break even if you can.  That patronizing half-baked tailor’s dummy that called me out of my name will be back bimeby, with his pockets full.  I’d like to see him taken down a peg, but I dassent spoil the sale of my mine.  Tell him I’m in bed, full, but’ll be out in an hour or so.  He’ll come again to buy me out.  Hates me like poison, he does.  If you can get him to bite, go it!  But I doubt if you’ll find even that saphead as rank as you three wise guys.  Anyway, I don’t want to see him while I feel this way.  My head aches, and I suppose there’s some sort of law against shooting the likes of him—­or you.  I’m leavin’ for another hotel, right now.  Don’t you fellows bother me if you value your hides.  If you can skin, that puppy, why, sic ’em, Towse! and the devil take the hindmost!  Oh, you Smart Alecks!”