“Then I will not tell you where is the gold!  Then I hate you and I will fix you good!  You want that gold mine awful bad.  You will have to marry me before I tell you.”

Casey straightened and looked at her, his frying pan in one hand, his coffeepot in the other.  “Say, I never asked you about the darn mine, did I?  I done my talkin’ to Injun Jim.  It’s you that butted in here on this deal.  Seein’ he’s dead, I’ll talk to his squaw and make a deal with her, mebby.”  He looked her over measuringly.  “Princess—­hunh!  I’ll tell yuh in plain American what you are, if yuh don’t git outa here.  I may want a gold mine, all right, but I sure don’t want it that bad.  Git when I tell yuh to git!”

A squaw with no education would have got forthwith.  But Lucy Lily had learned to be like white ladies,—­or so she said.  She screamed at him in English, in Piute, and chose words in each that no princess should employ to express her emotions.  Her loud denunciations followed Casey to the tepee, where he stopped and offered his services to Hahnaga as undertaker.

She accepted stolidly and together they buried Injun Jim, using his best blanket and not much ceremony.  Casey did not know the Piute customs well enough to follow them, and his version of the white man’s funeral service was simple in the extreme.  Hahnaga, however, brought two bottles of pickles and one jar of preserves which had outlasted Injun Jim’s appetite, and put them in the grave with him, together with his knife and an old rifle and his pipe.

To dig a grave and afterwards heap the dirt symmetrically over a discarded body takes a little time, no matter how cursory is the proceeding.  Casey ceased to hear Lucy Lily’s raucous voice and so thought that she had settled down.  He misjudged the red princess.  He discovered that when he went back to where William had stood.

He no longer stood there.  He was gone, pack and all, and once more Casey stood equipped for desert journeying with shirt, overalls, shoes and socks, and his old Stetson, and with half a plug of tobacco, a pipe and a few matches in his pocket.  On the bush where William had been tied a piece of paper was impaled and fluttered in the wind.  Casey jerked it off and read the even, carefully formed script,—­and swore.

  “Dear Sir: I am going to Tonopah.  If you try to come I will tell the
sherf to coming and see Jim and put you in jail.  I will tell the judge you killed him and the sherf will put you in jail and hung you.  Those are fine shirts.  I will wear them silk.  As ever your friend,
  Yours truly,
  LUCY LILY.”

Casey sat down on a rock to think it over.  The squaw was moving about within the hut, collecting the pitifully few belongings which Lucy Lily had disdained to steal.  An Indian does not like to stay where one has died.

Casey could overtake Lucy Lily, if he walked fast and did not stop when dark fell, but he did not want to overtake her.  He was not alarmed at her threat of the sheriff, but he did not want to see her again or hear her or think of her.