“Whilst I was first a-constructing this ingenious theory your objection might have carried force; for I didn’t have a fact to stand on, as you observe.  I conjectured round pretty spry, too.  Reckon it took me all of half a second—­while them two warriors was giving me the evil eye.  I’ll tell you how it was.”  He related the story of the shooting match and the lost bet.  “And to this unprovoked design against an inoffensive stranger I fitted the only possible meaning and shape that would make a lick of sense, dovetailin’ in with the real honest-to-goodness facts I already knew.”

“But don’t you see, old thing, you’re still up in the air?  Your theory doesn’t touch ground anywhere.”

“Stanley—­my poor deluded boy!—­when I got to the railroad I wired that assayer right off.  Our samples never reached El Paso.  So I wrote out my fake location and filed it.  See what followed that filing—­over yonder?  I come this way on purpose, expecting to see those fires, Stanley.  If they hadn’t been there we’d have gone on to our mine.  Now we’ll go anywhere else.”

“Well, I’ll just be teetotally damned!” Stanley remarked with great fervor.

“Trickling into your thick skull, is it?  Son, get a piece of charcoal.  Now you make black marks on that white rock as I tell you, to hold down my statements so they don’t flutter away with the wind.  Ready?  Number One:  Our copper samples didn’t reach the assayer—­make a long black mark ...  Therefore—­make a short black mark ...  Number Two:  Either Old Pete’s crazy theory is correct in every particular—­a long black mark ...  Or—­now a short black mark ...  Number Three:  The assayer has thrown us down—­a long black mark ...  Number Four:  Which would be just as bad—­make a long black mark.”

CHAPTER IV

Stanley Mitchell looked hard at the long black mark; he looked out along the south to the low line of the Gavilan Hills; he looked at the red arc of sun peering suddenly over the Comobabi Range.

“Well—­and so forth!” he said.  “Here is a burn from the branding!  And what are we going to do now?”

“Wash the dishes.  You do it.”

“You are a light-minded and frivolous old man,” said Stan.  “What are we going to do about our mine?”

“I’ve done told you.  We—­per you—­are due to wash up the dishes.  Do the next thing next.  That’s a pretty good rule.  Meantime I will superintend and smoke and reflect.”

“Do your reflecting out loud, can’t you?” said Stan.  His smooth forehead wrinkled and a sudden cleft appeared between his eyebrows, witness of an unaccustomed intentness of thought.  “Say, Pete; this partnership of ours isn’t on the level.  You put in half the work and all the brains.”

“’Sall right,” said Pete Johnson.  “You furnish the luck and personal pulchritude.  That ain’t all, either.  I’m pickin’ up some considerable education from you, learning how to pronounce words like that—­pulchritude.  I mispronounced dreadful, I reckon.”