Twenty times a millionaire, he knew that Stampede Smith was broke again.
"Good morning," he said so unexpectedly that the little man jerked himself round like the lash of a whip, a trick of the old gun days.

"Why so much loneliness, Stampede ?" Stampede grinned wryly.

He had humorous, blue eyes, buried like an Airedale's under brows which bristled even more fiercely than his whiskers.

"I'm thinkin'," said he, "what a fool thing is money.

Good mornin', Alan!" He nodded and chuckled, and continued to chuckle in the face of the lifting fog, and Alan saw the old humor which had always been Stampede's last asset when in trouble.