“Understand!” Matt repeated, almost menacingly.

“Ain’t we always been square?” the other replied, on the defensive, what of the treachery already whispering in him.

“It don’t cost nothin’, bein’ square in hard times,” Matt retorted.  “It’s bein’ square in prosperity that counts.  When we ain’t got nothin’, we can’t help bein’ square.  We’re prosperous now, an’ we’ve got to be business men—­honest business men.  Understand?”

“That’s the talk for me,” Jim approved, but deep down in the meagre soul of him,—­and in spite of him,—­wanton and lawless thoughts were stirring like chained beasts.

Matt stepped to the food shelf behind the two-burner kerosene cooking stove.  He emptied the tea from a paper bag, and from a second bag emptied some red peppers.  Returning to the table with the bags, he put into them the two sizes of small diamonds.  Then he counted the large gems and wrapped them in their tissue paper and chamois skin.

“Hundred an’ forty-seven good-sized ones,” was his inventory; “twenty real big ones; two big boys and one whopper; an’ a couple of fistfuls of teeny ones an’ dust.”

He looked at Jim.

“Correct,” was the response.

He wrote the count out on a slip of memorandum paper, and made a copy of it, giving one slip to his partner and retaining the other.

“Just for reference,” he said.

Again he had recourse to the food shelf, where he emptied the sugar from a large paper bag.  Into this he thrust the diamonds, large and small, wrapped it up in a bandana handkerchief, and stowed it away under his pillow.  Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes.

“An’ you think they’re worth a hundred thousan’?” Jim asked, pausing and looking up from the unlacing of his shoe.

“Sure,” was the answer.  “I seen a dancer down in Arizona once, with some big sparklers on her.  They wasn’t real.  She said if they was she wouldn’t be dancin’.  Said they’d be worth all of fifty thousan’, an’ she didn’t have a dozen of ’em all told.”

“Who’d work for a livin’?” Jim triumphantly demanded.  “Pick an’ shovel work!” he sneered.  “Work like a dog all my life, an’ save all my wages, an’ I wouldn’t have half as much as we got to-night.”

“Dish washin’s about your measure, an’ you couldn’t get more’n twenty a month an’ board.  Your figgers is ’way off, but your point is well taken.  Let them that likes it, work.  I rode range for thirty a month when I was young an’ foolish.  Well, I’m older, an’ I ain’t ridin’ range.”

He got into bed on one side.  Jim put out the light and followed him in on the other side.

“How’s your arm feel?” Jim queried amiably.

Such concern was unusual, and Matt noted it, and replied:—­

“I guess there’s no danger of hydrophoby.  What made you ask?”

Jim felt in himself a guilty stir, and under his breath he cursed the other’s way of asking disagreeable questions; but aloud he answered:  “Nothin’, only you seemed scared of it at first.  What are you goin’ to do with your share, Matt?”