Page:The man on horseback (IA manonhorseback00abdurich).pdf/23

Rh "Fool yourself!" In his excitement Truex missed the flapjack that he was tossing browned side up into the skillet, so that it dropped on the ground with a flopping, sizzling smack. "I tell you it's the real thing. Look a-here, Tom. I guess them years on the range have stunted yer perceptions. Of course you don't know the hills as I do. You can't know–oh–the struggle, the fight, the treachery, the damned cheating deceit that's in them rocks. But," wagging his patriarchal beard, "nor can you know the promise of them hills. Wealth that comes to you suddenly after you've given up hope and are mighty near to blowing off yer head with a stick o' powder! Why, by the Immortal and Solemnly Attested Heck!"–this was his pet swear word–"I tell you I have ranged these here hills since I was knee-high to a wood louse and I've never seen such a vein of–"

"Say! What is a vein?"

"Gosh A'mighty! Go to bed, Tom, before I brain you with my skillet. Only take this bit o' information along and hug it in yer dreams: You've got enough gold down there in the Yankee Doodle Glory to buy enough what you want!"

"Oh!" Tom Graves yawned and kicked off his high-heeled boots. "I always did have a hankering after the coin. There's that new saddle Dixon Harris got up from Gallup's. Cost him seventy seeds an he's willing to part with it for fifty, spot cash. Guess there's enough gold in my half for that?"

"Tom," he said very solemnly, "I tell you there's enough gold in there so's you can do what you darned please. You can go to Spokane and join the Club and be a man o' leisure. You can walk up Seventh Avenue and have the pick of the all them swell dumps