"Buy the claim!" I hollers, jumping up. "Buy the claim? What's this you're giving me? After all my toils and hardships and one thing and another, to sell the Golden Queen? Well, I want you to understand that nobody buys this claim, except across my dead body," says I. Aggy, he looks completely dumfounded. "My! This puts me in an awkward fix," he says. "Gentlemen, you see how I'm up against it? I can't sell without my partner's consent, now he's in his right mind; and, as far as that goes, the only reason I wanted to sell is removed. The dicker's off, that's the long and short of it." Oh, how pleased that tinhorn looked! He swallowed three times and got red in the face before he answered a word. "This may be all right, but it looks mighty queer to me," he growls. "The ways of Providence is past understanding," says Aggy, taking off his hat. "To our poor human minds it does seem queer, no doubt. Now, Mr. Daggett," he continued, waving his arm in that broad-minded style he had, "I'm sorry things has come out this way for your sake, although a man that has such a sympathising nature as you will soon forget his own disappointment in the general joy that envelopes this camp. And to show you there's nothing small about me, you can have any one of those chunks you dug out this afternoon that don't weigh over two dollars." Daggett sent the chunk to a place where it would melt quick, and expressed a hope we'd follow it. With that he hopped into his go-cart and pulled for town, larruping the poor horse sinful. We had the pleasure of seeing the animile turn the outfit into the gully in return for the compliment. They scrambled in again and disappeared from view. Then Aggy reached out his hand to me. "Don't tell me nothing but the plain truth, old man," says he; "I can't bear nothing except the plainest kind of truth, but on your sacred word of honour, ain't your uncle Ag a corker?" "Aggy," says I, "I ain't up to the occasion. There ain't a man on earth could do credit to your qualities but yourself." Then we shook hands mighty hearty. Where the Horse is Fate One thing's certain, you can't run a sheep ranch, nor no other kind of ranch, without hired men. They're the most important thing, next to the sheep. I may have stated, absent-mindedly, that the Big Bend was organised on scientific principles: none of your gol-darned-heads-or-tails--who's-it--what-makes-the-ante-shy, about it. Napoleon Buonaparte in person, in his most complex minute, couldn't have got at this end of it better than I did. It looked a little roundabout, but that's the way with your Morgan strain of idees. Here's how I secured the first man--he didn't look like good material to the careless eye. Burton and me had just turned the top of that queer hill, that overlooks the Southwest road into the Bad Lands, when I see a parcel of riders coming out. Somehow, they jarred me. "Easy," says I, and grabs Burton's bridle.