The gambler was exceedingly pleased.  That Culver would now be ready, as never before, to receive a proposition whereby the owners of the “Laughing Water” claim could be deprived of their ground, he was well convinced.

For reasons best known to himself and skillfully concealed from all acquaintances, McCoppet had remained practically in hiding since the moment in which he had beheld that half-breed Piute Indian in the saloon.  He remained out of sight even now, dispatching a messenger to Culver, in the afternoon, requesting his presence for a conference for the total undoing of Van Buren.

Culver, who in ordinary circumstances might have refused this request with haughty insolence, responded to the summons rather sooner than McCoppet had expected.  He was still red with anger, and meditating personal violence to Van at the earliest possible meeting.

McCoppet, with his smokeless cigar in his mouth, and his great opal sentient with fire, received his visitor in the little private den to which Bostwick had been taken.

“How are you, Culver?” he said off-handedly.

“I wanted to have a little talk.  I sent a man up to your shop a while ago, and he told me you fired Van Buren out of the place on the run.”

“That’s nobody’s business but mine,” said Culver aggressively.  “If that is all you care to talk about——­”

“Don’t roil up,” interrupted the gambler.  “I don’t even know what the fight was about, and I don’t care a tinker’s whoop either.  I got you here to give you a chance to put Van Buren out of commission and make a lifetime winning.”

Culver looked at him sharply.

“It must be something crooked.”

“Nothing’s crooked that works out straight,” said McCoppet.  “What’s life anyhow but a sure-thing game?  It’s stacked for us all to lose out in the end.  What’s the use of being finniky while we live—­as long as even the Almighty’s dealing brace?”

Culver was impatient.  “Well?”

“I won’t beat around the chapparal,” said McCoppet.  “It ain’t my way.”  Nevertheless, with much finesse and art he contrived to put his proposition in a manner to rob it of many of its ugly features.  However, he made the business plain.

“You see,” he concluded, “the old reservation line might actually be wrong—­and all you’d have to do would be to put it right.  That’s what we want—­we want the line put right.”

Culver was more angered than before.  He understood the conspiracy thoroughly.  No detail of its cleverness escaped him.

“If you thought you could trade on my personal unpleasantness with an owner of the ‘Laughing Water’ claim,” he said hotly, “you have made the mistake of your life.  I wish you good-day.”

He rose to go.  McCoppet rose and stopped him.

“Don’t get feverish,” said he.  “It don’t pay.  I ain’t requesting this service from you for just your feelings against a man.  There’s plenty in this for us all.”