deal with the Curlew Mining Investment Company of No. 162 Dearborne Street, Chicago, you are putting this Number Two claim into the block of claims as your own and making the statement that it cost you seventy-five hundred dollars, even though you don’t own it and hadn’t a chance of buying it until to-night. We know that the company has been organized on a false basis to sell its stock just because you don’t and never did own this property, and that you and MacPharlane got so desperate that in order to put the deal across and get Ray out of the way you even put up a fake stage robbery to land Ray in jail, where he’d fall for your game.”

He leaned back triumphantly even as Shaughnessy lost his head, grew purple, sputtered as if he were about to be overcome by a stroke of apoplexy and roared with a brawling oath, “That’s a lie. You can’t prove any bunk like that and you know it!”

“Prove it? Can’t prove it?” David retorted with an air of amused irony. “Why, I can hand stuff enough over to the prosecuting attorney of this county to have you in jail by noon to-morrow, and what’s more—by Heaven!—if you don’t close with us to-night my partners and I will see that you and MacPharlane are landed there to-morrow if we have to kill you and haul your carcases in to show that we have you!”

He had half arisen to his feet, crouched forward and now ended his threat with the emphatic bang of his fist on Shaughnessy’s desk.

There was a moment’s silence in which the fat boss of Wallula gasped, drew back and then stared around furtively as he heard the sound of steps walking crisply and hollowly over the board walk outside.

“Hoping MacPharlane or Pinder will come and make an interruption, are you?” David asked, reading his mind. “Well, hope so too. We’ve got a man posted at the outer door who’ll welcome either or both of them—with a gun. We don’t allow for any chances in our game. We play to win, and you’re a fool if you don’t see that it’s so and come across. You take my advice and sit down until I tell you what we’re going to prove in the matter of that stage robbery if we have to hand you and our proof over to the county attorney.”

Shaughnessy leaned back helplessly in his chair and muttered hoarsely, “All right. Shoot! What have you got?”

“We’re going to prove that you got the bills for a plant and that you took the numbers and shipped them. And then that you and MacPharlane went down to where the stage was robbed in your buggy, which you drove into a side road, where you tied 

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