"Now, pardner, let me tell you how I size up the princess. She's a good-hearted woman as ever lived, but she's a little off color with the women who run the church socials here. She's a rippin' good business woman, and her luck beats h—l. Why last week she bought a feller's claim in fer ten thousand dollars and yesterday they tapped a vein of eighty dollar ore, runnin' three feet wide. She don't haff to live here—she's worth a half million dollars—but she likes mining and she likes men. She knows how to handle 'em too—as you'll find out. She's hail-fellow with us all—but I tell ye she's got to like a feller all through before he sees the inside of her parlor. She's stuck on you. We're good friends—she come to call on my wife yesterday, and she talked about you pretty much the hull time. I never saw her worse bent up over a man. I believe she'd marry you, Mose, I do."
"Takes two for a bargain of that kind," said Mose.
The marshal turned. "But, my boy, that means making you a half owner of all she has—why that last mine may go to a million within six months."
"That's all right," Mose replied, feeling the intended good will of the older man. "But I expect to find or earn my own money. I can't marry a woman fifteen years older'n I am for her money. It ain't right and it ain't decent, and you'll oblige me by shutting up all such talk."
The sheriff humbly sighed. "She is a good deal older, that's a fact—but she's took care of herself. Still, as you say, it's none o' my business. If she can't persuade you, I can't. Come in, and I'll introduce you to the managers of the National——"
"Can't now, I will later."
"All right, so long! Come in any time."
Mose stepped into a barber shop to brush up a little, for he had acquired a higher estimate of the princess, and when he entered the dining room of the Palace he made a handsome figure. Whatever he wore acquired distinction from his beauty. His hat, no matter how stained, possessed charm. His dark shirt displayed the splendid shape of his shoulders, and his cartridge belt slanted across his hip at just the right angle.
The woman waiting for him smiled with an exultant glint in her half-concealed eyes.
"Sit there," she commanded, pointing at a chair. "Two beers," she said to the waiter.