“Partners, heh! This is the way you treat a partner because he don’t agree with you!”
“Yeh, this is the way I treat pardners. I got more respeck fur a dead pardner than I have fur some live ones I could mention. You kin cut off the slack of that lash rope there and tie your own hands. I’ll make a better job of it when you’re through.”
Aleck McAdams seemed to have had some experience in manhandling. He pocketed the revolver and tied his living partner securely and set him on a rock nearby, ignoring Turner’s threats and protestations. He got out the pick and pried loose many flat slabs of shale rock on the other side of the creek. These he carried to the grave and set them neatly upon the dirt mound, edge to edge, so that none of the gravel of the pothole remained in evidence to excite the cupidity of a passing prospector—a remote chance in that far land, yet one to be guarded against.
With his jackknife McAdams scraped away the verse and wrote instead, underneath the name and date:
A GOOD OLD SCOUT
He replaced the pick and shovel in the pack. Then he tethered the mining engineer to one of the mules by a ten-foot rope, and tied the red bandanna over Turner’s eyes so that he could see only the ground.
“What’s this unnecessary insult for?” inquired the man who vainly sought to illustrate the distinction between sentiment and sentimentality.
“You’re too durn handy with that there notebook of yours,” replied McAdams. “It’s a twisty country, yet with the help of sketchin’s I reckon you could sneak back here some day an’ rob the grave. I aim to put the kibosh on that!”
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the September 7, 1927 issue of The Popular Magazine.