“That gold mine I am keeping for my husband,” she announced.  “It is a present for a wedding gift for my man.  I shall not marry an Indian man.  I am too pretty and I have a gold mine, and I will marry a white man.  Indians don’t know what money is good for.  I want to live in a town and wear silk dresses all the time every day and ride in a red automobile and have lots of rings and go to shows.  Have you got lots of money?”

I don’t know what Casey told her.  He says he swore he hadn’t a nickel to his name.

“I think you have got lots of money.  I think perhaps you are rich.  I don’t see white men walk in the desert with silk shirts and have lots of jam and pickles if they are not rich.  I think you want that gold mine awful bad.  You gave Jim lots of jam so he would tell you.  White men want lots of more money when they have got lots of money.  It is like that in shows.  If a man is poor he don’t care.  If a man is rich he is hunting all the time for more money and killing people.  So I think you are like them rich mans in shows.”

Casey told her again that he was poor; but she couldn’t have believed him,—­not in the face of all the silk and sweets he had displayed.

“I am awful glad Jim is dead.  Now you have gave me the things.  We will go to Tonopah and you will buy a red automobile and we will ride in it.  And you will buy me lots of silk and rings.  I shall be a lady like a princess in a show.”

“Your mother has got something to say about that gold mine,” Casey blurted desperately.  “It’s hers by rights.  She’d have to go fifty-fifty on it.  She’s got it coming, and I never cheated anybody yet.  I ain’t going to commence on an old squaw.”

“She is a big fool.  What you think Hahnaga want of money?  The agent he gives her blankets and tea and flour.  If you give Hahnaga silk, I will be awful mad.  She is old.  She will die pretty quick.”

“Well,” said Casey, “I dunno as any of us has got any cinch on living.  And if there’s a gold mine in the family, she sure has got to have an even break.  What about old Jim?  Buried him yet?”

“He is in the tepee.  I think Hahnaga will dig a grave.  I don’t care.  I will go with you, and we will find the gold mine.  Then you will buy me—­”

“I’ll buy you nothin’!” Casey’s tone was emphatic.

Lucy Lily looked at him steadily.  “Before we go for the gold mine we will go to Tonopah and get marriage, and you will give me a gold ring on my finger.  Then I will show you where is gold so much you will have money to buy the world full of things.”  She smiled at him, showing her gold tooth.  “I like you for my man,” she said.  “I am awful pretty.  I have lots of fellows.  I could marry lots of other white mans, but I will marry you.”

“Like hell you will!” snorted Casey, and began to wipe out his frying pan and empty his coffeepot and make other preparations for instant packing.  “Like hell you’ll marry me!  Think I’d marry a squaw—?”