openin' up in the mornin' when I'd be goin off trick, an' I most generally stopped in for a couple of drinks or so. An' one mornin' when I'd downed three or four, I noticed you kind of givin' me the once-over. There wasn't no one else in the place, an' you come over an' leaned yer elbows on the bar, an' you says: 'Yer goin' kind of heavy on that stuff, son,' you says.
"'What the hell's the difference?' I says, 'I ain't got only six months to live an' I might's well enjoy what I can of it.'
"'Are they goin' to hang ye in six months?' you asks, 'Have ye got yer sentence?'
"'I've got my sentence,' I says, 'But it ain't hangin'. The doctors sentenced me. It's the con.'
"'To hell with the doctors,' you says, 'They don't know it all. We'll fool 'em. All you need is to git out in the mountains—an' lay off the hooch.'
"I laughed at you. 'Me go to the mountains!' I says, 'Why man I ain't hardly got strength to get to my room an' back to the job again—an' couldn't even make that if it wasn't for the hooch.'
"'That's right,' you says, 'From the job to the room, an' the room to the job, ye'll last maybe six months—but I'm doubtin' it. But the mountains is different.' An' then you goes on an talks mountains an' gold till you got me interested, an' you offers to grub-stake me for a trip into the Kootenay country. You claimed it was a straight business proposition—fifty-fifty if I made a strike, an' you put
up the money against my time." The stranger paused and smiled as a subdued ripple of whisperings went from man to man as he mentioned the Kootenay. Then he looked Kelliher squarely in the face: "There wasn't no gold in the Kootenay," he said simply, "Or leastwise I couldn't find none. I figured someone had be'n stringin' you."
Patsy Kelliher shifted the hat to the back of his head and laughed out loud as his little eyes twinkled with merriment. "I git ye now, son," he said, "I moind the white face av ye, an' the chist bowed in like the bottom av a wash bowl, an' yer shoulders stuck out befront ye loike the horns av a cow." He paused as his eyes ran the lines of sinewy leanness and came to rest upon the sun bronzed face: "So ye made a failure av the trip, eh? A plumb clane failure—an' Oi'm out the couple av hundred it cost me fer the grub stake——"
"It cost you more than five hundred," interrupted the other. "I was in bad shape and there was things I needed that other men wouldn't of—that I don't need—now."