Produced by Eric Eldred, Elaine Nash and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. A DEAL IN WHEAT And Other Stories Of The New And Old West By FRANK NORRIS _Illustrated by Remington, Leyendecker, Hitchcock and Hooper_ 1903 [Illustration: "'Sell A Thousand May At One-Fifty,' Vociferated The Bear Broker"] CONTENTS A Deal in Wheat The Wife of Chino A Bargain with Peg-Leg The Passing of Cock-Eye Blacklock A Memorandum of Sudden Death Two Hearts That Beat as One The Dual Personality of Slick Dick Nickerson The Ship That Saw a Ghost The Ghost in the Crosstrees The Riding of Felipe LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "'Sell a Thousand May at One-Fifty,' Vociferated the Bear Broker" Caught in the Circle. The last stand of three troopers and a scout overtaken by a band of hostile Indians. "'Ere's 'Ell to Pay!" "'My Curse Is on Her Who Next Kisses You'" A DEAL IN WHEAT I. THE BEAR--WHEAT AT SIXTY-TWO As Sam Lewiston backed the horse into the shafts of his backboard and began hitching the tugs to the whiffletree, his wife came out from the kitchen door of the house and drew near, and stood for some time at the horse's head, her arms folded and her apron rolled around them. For a long moment neither spoke. They had talked over the situation so long and so comprehensively the night before that there seemed to be nothing more to say. The time was late in the summer, the place a ranch in southwestern Kansas, and Lewiston and his wife were two of a vast population of farmers, wheat growers, who at that moment were passing through a crisis--a crisis that at any moment might culminate in tragedy. Wheat was down to sixty-six. At length Emma Lewiston spoke. "Well," she hazarded, looking vaguely out across the ranch toward the horizon, leagues distant; "well, Sam, there's always that offer of brother Joe's. We can quit--and go to Chicago--if the worst comes." "And give up!" exclaimed Lewiston, running the lines through the torets. "Leave the ranch! Give up! After all these years!" His wife made no reply for the moment. Lewiston climbed into the buckboard and gathered up the lines. "Well, here goes for the last try, Emmie," he said. "Good-by, girl. Maybe things will look better in town to-day." "Maybe," she said gravely. She kissed her husband good-by and stood for some time looking after the buckboard traveling toward the town in a moving pillar of dust. "I don't know," she murmured at length; "I don't know just how we're going to make out." When he reached town, Lewiston tied the horse to the iron railing in front of the Odd Fellows' Hall, the ground floor of which was occupied by the post-office, and went across the street and up the stairway of a building of brick and granite--quite the most pretentious structure of the town--and knocked at a door upon the first landing. The door was furnished with a pane of frosted glass, on which, in gold letters, was inscribed, "Bridges & Co., Grain Dealers."