"Don't be so sure, sonny! You took me off guard; you know you did, or you'd never have laid me out. You weren't fair."
Toady, tasting his first victory over his bully brother, and finding it very sweet, suggested casually, "I'll scrap you any time you say. Now, if you like."
"My head aches too bad," said the other hastily. "That was a nasty place to fall. It's a wonder it didn't fracture my skull."
Toady looked back at the spot which Billiard had adorned a moment before, and remorse overtook him. "I'm sorry, old chap, if I hurt you," he said contritely. "I wasn't aiming to put you out of business, but you made me so all-fired mad——"
"Aw, forget it! I was just fooling," protested Billiard, shamed by Toady's frank and manly confession. "Say, ain't that the haunted house the girls are always talking about?"
"Which? Maybe 'tis. It's the last one in town, they said. Mercy promised to point it out the next time we climbed the trail behind the house. Do you s'pose it really is haunted?"
"I dunno," Billiard answered indifferently.
Haunted houses in his opinion were things to be avoided. He had merely sought to distract Toady's thoughts from their fistic encounter by mentioning the place. But the younger boy's curiosity was aroused, and as they neared the deserted, unpainted, dilapidated hut, he studied it closely. To him it looked like any other untenanted shack in the mining town, and so he said musingly, "I wonder if that man really did kill himself there, or was he murdered?"
Billiard shivered. "Mercedes said he died there. That's all I know."
"She told me he was found dead, with all his pockets turned inside out, and——"