heart was out in the desert. He took the terrible blow with a smile and
a flash of his gold teeth, and never referred to his secret again.

He thought of her now, as he waddled back to his neglected game in the
Silver Dollar saloon. He wished that he might have been privileged to
admittance into that little room off the kitchen where something told
him she was lying; he wished that he might see her once again before
they buried her--but that would be presuming. He wished he knew of some
plan whereby that poor body might be spared the degradation of
interment in the lonely, windswept, desert cemetery, side by side with
Indians, Mexicans, Greek section hands and the rude forefathers of San
Pasqual.

What a profanation! That horrible cemetery, surrounded by a fence of
barbed wire and superannuated railroad ties, to receive that beloved
clay. He pictured her as he had seen her every day for ten years, and a
rush of vain regret brought the big tears to his buttermilk eyes; the
chords of memory twanged in his breast and he paused on the outskirts
of San Pasqual with hands upraised, fists clenched in an agony of
desperation.

"I can't stand it" he muttered. "I can't. It'll be lonely. I've got to
get out. I'll close my game after the funeral an' _vamose._"

But to return to affairs at the Hat Ranch.

While Harley P. Hennage sat in the Silver Dollar saloon that afternoon
dealing faro automatically and pondering the problem of the precise
purpose for which he had been created; and while Mrs. Pennycook went
from house to house west of the tracks, expounding her personal view of