And Judson Eells, who had rushed out at the rumor of his approach, drew up his lip and glared at him hatefully.
“You’re a criminal!” he bellowed, “I could have you jailed for this–that Stinging Lizard mine was salted!”
“The hell you say!” shrilled Wunpost and then 115he laughed uproariously while he did a little jig in his stirrups. “Yeee–hoo!” he yelled, “say, that’s pretty good! Have you any idee who done it?”
“You did it!” answered Eells, “and I could have you arrested for it, only I don’t want to have any trouble. But you agreed to leave town and now I see you’re back–what’s the meaning of this, Mr. Calhoun?”
“Too slow inside,” complained Mr. Calhoun, who was sporting a brand-new outfit, “so I thought I’d come back and shake hands with my friends and take another look at my mine. Costs money to live in Los Angeles and I bought me a dog–looky here, cost me eight hundred dollars!”
He reached down into a nest which he had hollowed out of the pack and held up a wilted fox terrier, and as Eells stood speechless he dropped it back into its cubby-hole and laid a loving hand on the mule.
“How’s this for a mule?” he enquired ingenuously, “cost me five hundred dollars in Barstow. Fastest walker in the West–picked him out on purpose–and my pack mule can carry four hundred. How much did you lose on the Stinging Lizard?”
“I lost over thirty thousand dollars, with the road work and all,” answered Eells with ponderous exactitude, and Wunpost laughed again.
“Thirty thousand!” he echoed. “I wish it was a million! But you can’t say that I didn’t warn you!”
“Warn me!” raged Eells, “you did nothing of the 116kind. It was a deliberate attempt to defraud me.”