in a gulch in the sand-hills. The coffin, marked only with a card, lay in a slight depression scooped out by the wind.

Nearest to the rough pine box stood the widow, with lowered eyes, but without the trace of an expression on her face. Heavy-handed, red-faced, gaunt and grim, Cassidy loomed up beside her. Behind them, in attitudes of more or less perfunctory interest, stood a white-capped cook from the commissary-tent, who had come out to get away from the flies, two vague-visaged unknowns from the vast under-world of hobodom, and a greasy, loose-lipped fireman with a dirty red sweater and a contemptuous eye.

"Go on!" whispered the woman. She threw one of her swift, compelling glances at Cassidy. "Say something!" And Cassidy obeyed; he could not have refused if he had tried.

It became at once apparent that he must make no rambling talk. The history of the past five days, while illuminating and diverting, could not be calculated to inspire the casual onlooker with religious awe. If aught was to be said, it must, perforce, be meaty and direct.

Cassidy grasped the irritating fireman firmly by the arm. Fixing him with a baleful eye, he spoke:

"This yere lady has wanted me to say something tuh yuh about her husband dyin'. As far as I kin understand, that part is all right. That's what he done. He's dead, all right; there ain't no mistake about that. Wot I'm askin' yuh is: Was he a man? Was he good for anything? Wot did he do when he wasn't workin'? Was he a low, mean cuss, always goin' round with bums?"

"How do I know?" asked the fireman, in an aggrieved tone. "Ouch! Say, leggo my arm!"

Cassidy's grip tightened. The fireman groaned dismally and subsided.

"Judgin' from wot I kin see, I should say he was! I mean he was good fer something. I should say he was surely a terrible weaver if he couldn't keep straight, hitched up alongside of the—the lamented widow. I don't think any feller could be much if he wasn't. Yuh see, pardner, he had all the chance in the world. He didn't need to be jay-hawkin' round, makin' eyes at every red-cheeked biscuit-shooter that fed him hot cakes. He had a nice ranch and a good wife. A feller that couldn't be grateful tuh a woman that's treated him as good as she has to-day, and hauled him clear from Willow Springs tuh git a Christian burial, and stood around fer him in a hot sun—well, he couldn't be no account at all!"

Cassidy paused and spat. "That's the way I look at it. And," thwarting the restive fireman by a startlingly painful grip on the fleshy part of his arm, "any feller that ain't got as good a wife—any feller that ain't got any, and lays round drinkin', and foolin' his money away on the 'double O,' and sittin' in tuh stud games with permiskus strangers, and gettin' ready tuh be a hobo—all I kin say is, he'd better brace up and try tuh deserve one. A feller that ain't got a wife is a no-account loafer and bum, and he ought tuh git kicked! This man had one, but he went and left her. Even then he done better than yuh done! That's all."

"Kin I go now?" queried the fireman smartly.

"Yuh kin!" responded Cassidy, malevolently, "but I'll see yuh later, young feller. I ain't overfond of yuh." And he turned away to cover the coffin with sand, digging it up laboriously and scattering it here and there with a piece of board.

"That was a mighty nice talk yuh gave the fireman," remarked the woman, during an interval in their labors. "I feel a lot better now. Mebbe the fireman will get married now and brace up. Was he really doing all those things yuh said?"

"Some feller was," answered Cassidy. "I heard about it."

"And now," announced the widow, "we'll just make him a good head-board and stop there. Edgard might have been a good husband, but he didn't try overhard. Have yuh got anything written?"

"I ain't got anything but this yere old location notice," ventured Cassidy doubtfully. "I guess, though, I'll just stake out Edgard, the same as a claim. Then it'll be regular, and there won't nobody touch him. Of course we won't put up any side centers or corner posts; jest a sort of discovery monument. He'll be safe for three months, all right."

And so Cassidy, with the nub of a pencil, and using his knee as a writing-desk, duly, and in the manner set forth in the laws of the United States, discovered and located Edgard Gentry, age thirty-five, died of consumption, extending fifteen hundred feet in a northerly and southerly direction and three hundred feet on either side, together with all his dips, spurs, and angles.

"Yuh write a nice hand," murmured the widow pensively, sitting down in the sand beside him and unwittingly breathing on his neck as he wrote. "Did yuh go tuh school, Mister Cassidy?"

"Yessum," was the confused answer. "Leastways, part of the time."

The widow surveyed him with a dreamy look in her fine eyes and pulled thoughtfully at her full lower lip.

"You're a big man," she remarked. "How much do you weigh?"

"Over two hundred," answered Cassidy consciously.

"And yuh haven't got any home?"—innocently.

"No, ma'am."

"What were yuh doing tuh that poor old man to-day?"

The sudden irrelevance of the question startled Cassidy immeasurably.

"Wot? That little old Arkinsaw man? Oh—nothin'. Did yuh see me talkin' tuh him?"

"I did," said the woman; "and I also saw yuh poking him up the street with a big stick. Do yuh think that was a nice thing for a strong young man like yuh?"

"I was—I was just advisin' him," explained Cassidy thickly. "I——"

"What were yuh hurtin' that old man for?" was the forceful interruption. "Did he ever hurt yuh any?"

"Hurt me? Old Arkinsaw? No, ma'am; not tuh my knowledge. But——"

"Never mind that," said the woman stonily though the big, strong eyes had a favorable light in their depths. "Yuh tell me why yuh were sticking him in the back."

"Well—he wanted a drink—that's why," Cassidy mumbled.

"Oh!" remarked the woman, with withering comprehension. "And so, because he was tired and thirsty and wanted a drink, yuh poked him. I see."

Cassidy grew desperate. "I'm afraid, ma'am, yuh don't rightly understand," he undertook to explain.

"Yes, I do," replied the woman hotly, and burned him with her eyes. Then she turned her back on him, which hurt him a great deal more.

Cassidy groaned aloud.

"I believe you're a bully," goaded the little woman, and showed an attractive, mutinous profile over her shoulder. "Do yuh bully women, too?"

Cassidy did not answer at once. When he did, it was in a low, rather lifeless voice: "No'm; I don't bother the women-folks much."

"There, there, now," soothed the woman, quickly turning to him and putting her hand on his shoulder with a motherly gesture. "Don't go tuh feelin' bad. Don't yuh s'pose I knew all the time why yuh did it? I was glad, too. Just yuh lay down there in the sand and get rested, and tell me all about it."

And so Cassidy, stretched full length, with his face half hidden in his arm, mumbled fragmentarily—and told. After it was finished, after all his misdeeds had been related, and counted over, one by one, he ventured to look up.

The woman's face was grave, but she was smiling. She laid her hand gently on his cheek and turned his eyes to hers.

"But you've quit now?" she stated.

"I've quit," answered Cassidy honestly.

"Well, then, it'll be all right. I reckon it's time for me to be going now. Yuh better drive me home."

The road to Willow Springs lay straight across the mesa. Here and there, in the yellow expanse of sand, were patches of green mesquit, where some underground flow came near enough to the surface to slake their thirsty roots. Elsewhere the sand shifted