Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/58

44 right to display his private feelings. He produced the roll.

"With your twenty, Healy," he announced, "we've got just one hundred and ninety-three dollars among us. You know best if that will take us through to wherever we're going."

"It might get us there," admitted Healy, "but we wouldn't have enough left to bid for a burro, let alone get an outfit."

"Then why didn't you bring the matter up in Los Angeles where we might have had some chance of raising the wind?" asked Stone. Lefty sucked at a short, charred briar and said nothing but looked his disgust at Healy.

"Because there's just as good a chance at Mexicali," said Healy. "A better chance. Listen to me. Mexicali is the only live town left within easy touch of the United States. It's just across the line from Calexico. Calexico's dry and tame as a Methodist prayer-meeting, but Mexicali is wet and wild and wide-open. It's the only frontier town still in existence. Everything goes. One man owns it and he's a friend of mine, Joe Castro.

"He's trying to make the place popular and he's got three main attractions. The liquor is first rate, he won't employ a dance-hall rustler who isn't pretty or who's more than twenty, and the games are straight. I don't say how long it'll last that way but right now Mexicali is a hummer.

"I can borrow a stake from Joe Castro at a pinch. But I don't want to. Joe 'll look on it as a grubstake