272“They all did!” he beamed, “but I’ve showed ’em, by grab–they ain’t calling me a blow-hard now. These Blackwater stiffs that wanted to run me out of town are coming around now to borrow five. They took up with a crook, just because he boosted for their town, and now they’re left holding the sack. But if they’d listened to me they wouldn’t be left flat, because I told ’em I was after his hide. And say, you should’ve seen him, when I came into his bank and shoved that big check under his nose! He knowed what I was thinking and he never said: ‘Boo!’ I showed him whether I knew how to write!”
He laid back and grinned broadly and Wilhelmina smiled, though a wistful look had crept into her eyes.
“Then I suppose,” she said, “you’re always going to hate me, because of course I did steal your mine. But now I’m glad it’s gone, because I wasn’t happy a minute–do you think you can forgive me, sometime?”
She glanced up appealingly but his brows had come down and he was staring at her fiercely.
“Gone!” he roared, “your mine ain’t gone! Ain’t you ever read that contract we framed up? Well, the mine reverts to you the first time a payment isn’t made or if the buyer becomes a fugitive from justice! Yeh, my friend slipped that in along with the rest of it, about death or an Act of God. Say, that’s what you might call head work!”
He jerked his chin and grinned admiringly but Wilhelmina did not respond.
“Yes,” she objected, “but how do I get the money 273to pay the men for building the road? Because the twenty-five thousand dollars that I had in the bank─”
“Get it?” cried Wunpost, “why you go up to your mine and dig out some big chunks of gold, and then you send it out and sell it at the mint and start a little bank of your own. But say, kid, you’re all right–I like you and all that–but something tells me you ain’t cut out for business. Now you’d better just turn this mine over to me─”
“Oh, will you take it back?” she cried out impulsively, leaping up and beginning to smile. “I’ve just wanted to give it to you but–well, of course I did steal it. And will you take me back for a friend?”
“Well, I might,” conceded Wunpost, rising slowly to his feet, and then he shook his head. “But you’re no business woman,” he stated, “what I was trying to say was─”