per day; and this production can be doubled by opening wells already drilled and capped, as soon as the market is enlarged. Mr. Denny is now worth probably over $30,000,000, and Charlie Canrod not much, if any, less. They started the asphalt company to use up some of the by-product, and have installed a gas company in Mexico City for the same purpose, and will probably instal them in other cities as conditions warrant. They also own oil fields at Sherman and other places in California, and are interested in a dozen different ventures. Such are the men who have made the Western States what they are to-day—men not afraid to take a chance and with the brains and ability to carry their schemes through. CHAPTER XXXV Mr. Denny and a mining claim—A wholesale killing averted—Stories of shooting escapades. Any one seeing Mr. Denny (the vice-president and biggest stockholder of our company) now would think him only a quiet man of affairs, yet some years ago he was known as one of the finest fighting men of New Mexico or Colorado. While working a prospect he had near Silver City, New Mexico, he decided to study law, did so successfully, and was called to the bar; but his ideas of practice were peculiar. He was employed by a mining company to protect a mining claim that was in litigation and which the opposing parties were about to take possession of while court was not in session. He put in an injunction of his own devising; he laid in a stock of provisions and water, built a barricade of dynamite boxes in the mouth of the tunnel, took up his position with a Winchester, and defied the sheriff and posse to oust him till the case could be tried; and the sheriff, not seeing any way to dissolve the injunction, left him strictly alone. Later, the court found for his clients. In the same city he had heard that an Italian named Carrera had made some slanderous remarks about him. Though this Carrera weighed nearly 200 lbs. and Denny at that time only about 125 lbs., he went up to the former’s office with a paper for him to sign, retracting what he had formerly said. Carrera refused, and Denny beat him till he signed. Then Denny took the document to the office of the daily paper and asked them to publish Carrera’s free and full retractation. But as the document had accumulated much blood during the progress of negotiations, the editor refused to publish it on the ground that “Carrera did not sign that of his own free will and volition.” “Sure he did,” said Denny; “I made him.”