Death Valley was drunk, but his conscience was still active and he burst into a voluble explanation.
“No, I gave her that stock,” he protested earnestly, “but she made me take it back.
“‘It ain’t mine,’ she says, ‘and I’ll work my hands off before I’ll take charity from anybody.’
“‘No, you keep it,’ I says, just exactly like you 182tole me, ‘because I’m your guardian, and all; and Wiley he says that I’m a hell of a poor one, because I sold him that stock for nothing. No,’ I says, just exactly like you tole me, ‘I want you to keep this stock.’”
“Well?” inquired Wiley, as Charley paused to take a drink, “and what did Virginia say, then?”
“Oh, I couldn’t repeat it,” answered Death Valley virtuously. “She don’t seem to like you now. She says you stole her mine.”
“Huh!” grunted Wiley, and looked about the cabin which was littered with bottles and flasks. “Well, where’ve youbeen?” he went on at last, the better to change the subject, and Charley leered at him shrewdly.
“Over across Death Valley,” he chanted drunkenly, “–on the east side, in the Funeral Range. But they put me to work on the graveyard shift so I quit and come back to town.”
“Ye-es,” jeered Wiley, “you’ve been on a big drunk. What are you doing with this demijohn of whiskey?”
“Why, I got it for the Colonel,” replied Charley, laughing childishly, “and I started to take it over to him, but my burros got away at Daylight Springs, so I made camp and drunk it all up.”