He led Wiley up an alley, then whisked him around corners and back to his house behind the Widow's. "Now, listen," he went on, when Wiley was in a chair and he had carefully fastened the door, "I'm going to show you something good." He reached under his bed and brought out ten sacks of samples which he spread, one by one, on the table. "Now, you see?" he said. "It's all that white quartz that you was after on the Paymaster dump. I followed the outcrop, on an extension of the Paymaster, and I took up ten, good, opened claims." "Umm," murmured Wiley, and examined each sample with a careful, appraising eye. "Yes, pretty good, Charley; I suppose you guarantee the title? Well, how much do you want for your claims?" "Oh, whatever you say," answered Charley modestly, "but I want two hundred dollars down." "And about a million apiece, I suppose, for the claims? It doesn't cost _me_ anything, you know, on an option." "Eh, heh, heh," laughed Charley indulgently and Heine, who had been looking from face to face, jumped up and barked with delight. "Eh, heh; yes, that's good; but you know me, Mr. Holman--I ain't so crazy as they think. No, I don't talk millions with my mouth full of beans; all I want is five hundred apiece. But I got to have two hundred down." "Oh," observed Wiley, "that's two dollars for the marriage license and the rest for the wedding journey. Well, if it's as serious as that----" He reached for his check-book and Charley cackled with merriment. "Yes, yes," he said, "then I _would_ be crazy. Do you know what the Colonel told me? "'Charley,' he says, 'whatever you do, don't marry no talking woman. She'll drive you crazy, the same as I am; but don't you forget that whiskey.'" "Oh, sure," exclaimed Wiley, beginning to write out the option, "this money is to buy whiskey for the Colonel!" "That's it," answered Charley. "He's over across Death Valley--in the Ube-Hebes--but I can't find my burros. They--Heine, come here, sir!" Heine came up cringing and Charley slapped him soundly. "Shut up!" he commanded and as Heine crept away Death Valley began to mutter to himself. "No, of course not; he's dead," he ended ineffectively, and Wiley looked up from his writing. "Who's dead?" he inquired, but Charley shook his head and listened through the wall. "Look out," he said, "I can hear her coming--jest give me that two hundred now." "Well, here's twenty," replied Wiley, passing over the money, and then there came a knock at the door. "Come in!" called out Charley and, as he motioned Wiley to be silent, Virginia appeared in the doorway. "Oh!" she cried, "I didn't know you were here!" But something in the way she fixed her eyes on him convinced Wiley that she had known, all the same. "Just a matter of business," he explained with a flourish, "I'm considering an option on some of Charley's claims." "Jest my bum claims!" mumbled Charley as Virginia glanced at him reprovingly. "Jest them ten up north of the Paymaster."