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62 than of irritation in his voice, "if you ain't the most secreetive cuss I ever travelled with I'm a Mexico dawg. Why didn't you say so? That letter'll make it all right with Steele an' all we got to do is fork it over an' we're through."

"Ain't so," said Turk equably. "It don't explain nothin' a-tall."

"Did Hurley tell you what it says?"

"Can't I read? It jus' says … Wait a minute."

Turk brought out of an inside vest pocket a folded bit of paper and a crumpled envelope; the latter he discarded as of no moment. And in the singsong of an illiterate man who reads aloud, he declaimed:

"There you are," finished Turk. "So far as bein' any news in it you might as well throw it away, huh?"

The sun was down among the trees upon the ridge when Steele came back into camp. And, though he had gone downstream upon leaving Rice and Wilson, he now appeared from above so that again the sun was in their eyes as they looked up at him. With a willow branch through their dripping gills he carried three fat trout; in the other hand was an old, black coffee pot.