“Ah,” smiled Blount, and nodded his head wisely, but there was a playful light in his eyes.
“Yes–ah!” flashed back Wiley, “and if you think you’re so danged smart I’ll let you keep your old mine a few months.”
He started for the door again but Blount dragged him back and laid a metal box on the table.
“Well, let’s get down to business,” he said with quick decision, and spread a heap of papers before his eyes. “There are all my Paymaster shares, and if you’ll take them off my hands you can have them for six cents, cash.”
“I said five,” returned Wiley, as he ran through 114the papers, “and an option to buy in six months. But this stock of the Widow’s–I can’t take that at any price–the Colonel isn’t legally dead.”
“What?” yelled Blount, and sat down in a chair while he stared at the inscrutable Wiley.
“His body was never found and, under the law, he can’t be declared dead for seven years. Mrs. Huff had no right to sell his stock.”
“Oh, but he’s dead, Wiley,” assured Blount. “Surely there’s no doubt of that. They found his burro, and his letters and everything; and where he had run wild through the sand. If that storm hadn’t come up they would certainly have found his body–the Indian trailers said so; so why stick on a technicality?”
“That’s the law,” said Wiley. “You know it yourself. But of course, if you want to vote this stock at a Directors’ meeting we can still do business on that lease.”
“Oh, my Lord!” sighed Blount, and after a heavy silence he rose up and paced the floor. As for Wiley, he ran through the papers, making notes of dates and numbers, and then grimly began to fill out a legal blank.