Ef you rather have the chance of getting the rest in cash, you'll let up on her." "You don't suppose," returned Mrs.Patterson contemptuously, "that she's got anything but what that man of hers--Poindexter--lets her have ?" "The sheriff says," retorted Patterson surlily, "that she's notified him that she claims the _rancho_ as a gift from her husband three years ago, and she's in _possession_ now, and was so when the execution was out.

It don't make no matter," he added, with gloomy philosophy, "who's got a full hand as long as _we_ ain't got the cards to chip in.

I wouldn't 'a' minded it," he continued meditatively, "ef Spence Tucker had dropped a hint to me afore he put out." "And I suppose," said Mrs.Patterson angrily, "you'd have put out too ?" "I reckon," said Patterson simply.
Twice or thrice during the evening he referred, more or less directly, to this lack of confidence shown by his late debtor and employer, and seemed to feel it more keenly than the loss of property.

He confided his sentiments quite openly to the sheriff in possession, over the whiskey and euchre with which these gentlemen avoided the difficulties of their delicate relations.

He brooded over it as he handed the keys of the shop to the sheriff when they parted for the night, and was still thinking of it when the house was closed, everybody gone to bed, and he was fetching a fresh jug of water from the well.