"Hey, shut up! Can the racket! Ain't the Chink got some stuff fer that? Sure he has. "Hey, John--come through with yer snake dope. Bring it here!" Prince Chu was standing about fifteen feet from the pair. Now he drew from his inner pocket the little flat case of medicines. Selecting the vial of white crystals, he replaced the case in his pocket and drew the cork from the bottle. Before he made any move toward the distressed Shorty, he emptied the contents of the vial into the palm of his hand. Sufficient wind yet stirred within their shelter to disturb the light pulverized stuff. So he closed his fingers over it. Holding it thus, he waited, while the flicker of a smile touched his impassive features. The smitten Shorty caught the inkling of some subtle purpose back of the Chinaman's pause. "Hey!" he yelled. "Wot'sa matter?" He tried to draw his gun. It was packed solid in his pocket with sand. Frantically he dug it out, while his partner stood by, half-amused. "No tricks, Chink! Come through with it!" he frenziedly commanded. He drew the pistol finally. The old Chinaman maintained his distance. "Why should you shoot me?" he questioned. "If you should do that, the powder would spill from my hand and be lost in the sand." A startled look overspread the features already terrified. "If you come any nearer," was the mild assurance, "I will let the powder scatter." "Hell!" articulated Shorty, deadened in his tracks. "I will give this to you when you have returned the black opal to me," stated the scion of the Ancient Tsins. These words acted as a spring releasing the afflicted man's action. He wheeled about to his partner. "Now, will yuh gimme that?" he shrieked. But a mortal terror had at last entered the face of Squint. He saw his partner dying a violent death, and he had no mind to release the uncanny stone which he was now convinced would work the same fate with him, if he should let it go. With the most desperate speed he had ever achieved in his lifetime, his hand flashed for his gun. There followed a streak of flame and a report against the twilight and the din of the storm. The tall, squint-eyed man sank first to his knees, and then crumpled down into the sand. Death caught the horrified expression in his red-rimmed eyes and held it until he pitched forward, face down, his right hand still wedged in his hip pocket by the sand which had prevented him from drawing the gun. With fingers shaking out of his control, Shorty turned the limp form over and clawed into one of the inner vest pockets until he triumphantly drew forth the smoldering black opal at the end of its shimmering chain. Half-crawling, half-stumbling, he started with it for the extended hand of Yuen Ming Chu. He had dropped his short weapon behind him, and the troubled sand was crawling down over the upturned form of his victim.