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Three days' liquor, two days' taper, one day suffer, then the water wagon for a spell. Thank you all the same, Mr. Craney. What can I do for you without the drink?" But when Craney mentioned Sanchez, the ghost and the drinking bout by night at the rookery, Case said he must have been nigher to jimjams than he'd got in a year.

Louis, whose names don't count. "Warrant!" I says. "What for?" "Why," says Jessamine, "Phipp isn't his name, as you will see by the warrant;" which was no particular news to me. But I didn't like the job of going back after Craney. I didn't seem to take much interest in parties in St. Louis, but it set me arguing again whether he was a lunatic, or had a point of view.

"And if they've a mind to present him with a bag of beans now and then, whose business is it?" says Craney. "The alcalde's," says the official, very calm. "It's not mine. I have but to take him before the alcalde, and here is the keeper of the lighthouse who takes his place. In candour I think Senor de Avila does not return. It is no affair of mine."

Craney coaxed him back to Almy after awhile, where every one from Archer down to the drum boys showed him many a kindness, and where from time to time he received letters that seemed to bring him comfort, in spite of the fact that Bonner, Bucketts and even gruff old Stannard, when they spoke of it at all, were given to saying that there was little happiness in store for the poor girl at Portland, for Willett was not made of the stuff that kept man faithful long to any one woman.

It was not much of a game, said Strong, who was there, only Willett, Craney, Watson, Briggs and himself, and was remarkable for only one fact, that Case, the bookkeeper, who never before had seemed to care to play, had happened in late, looked curiously on a moment, and then, without having been presented to Willett, seemed desirous of taking a hand.

Craney bade them carry him to his own room, where there would be better light, and while some of them laid him on Craney's bed and others carefully scouted the surrounding willows for trace of the assassin, and others still went in and stirred up Case, sleeping heavily, stupidly, "like a hog," said an indignant few until told of the doctor's "dope."

Presently they were found again, passing between the store and the shack, around in rear of the low log building, where at that time, presumably, Craney, Watts and Case were asleep in their respective rooms.

I recollect there was something that was like a duck, and some canned tomatoes, and a kind of fruit with a yellow rind. "There's two hundred in my army," says Craney sociably, "in four divisions. This is a special one. Mighty fond of drilling they are. Fact, 'most everybody's in the army. They're softening under discipline, but some of 'em are bloodthirsty yet."

Now, the secret of a boom is to spread out as far as you can reach, and then flap. That's business. When you've got people's attention, you can settle down and make your bargains. Mind you," says Craney, turning on me an eye that was cold and calm "mind you, I don't say that's what I'm going to do, nor I don't say what I'm calculating to trade for. Maybe I have an idea, and maybe I haven't."

"You bet we'll settle," said Case, the bookkeeper, wholly ignoring it, and even then the fact was noted and thereafter remembered. "I think I won't go up t­o the post just now," said Willett to Craney. "Perhaps you have " "Certainly, Mr. Willett. Come right in here," said the trader hospitably, leading the way into a darkened room. "Take a good nap; sleep as long as you want to.