At last the stranger filled ten small canvas sacks with specimens of ore and brought them into camp on a buckboard to be assayed. Chicken Bill was with him; and pleading internal pains that made it impossible to ride upright, our wily one lay back with the bags of specimens while the stranger drove. From time to time the astute Chicken Bill, having advantage of rough places in the canyon’s bed which engaged the faculties of the stranger, emptied some two or three quills of powdered gold into each specimen sack by the ingenius process of forcing the sharpened point of the quill through the web of the canvas, and blowing the treasure in among the ore. “It’s a cinch!” ruminated Chicken Bill, when he had completed these improvements. Then he refreshed himself from a whiskey flask, said that he felt better, and climbed back beside the stranger on the buckboard’s seat. There came the assay next day. With that ceremony Chicken Bill had nothing to do, and could only wait. But he owned no misgivings; there would come but one result; the ore would show a richness not to be resisted. Chicken Bill put in his time preparing Deadwood Maggie for the sale. He told her that not a cent less than sixty thousand dollars would be accepted. “It’s worth more,” declared Chicken Bill, “but me an’ you, Maggie, ain’t got the long green to develop it. Our best play is to cash in if we can get the figure.” But disaster was striding on the trail of Chicken Bill. That evening, as Deadwood Maggie was returning to the Belle Union from the Dutch Woman’s Store, to which mart she had been driven for a tooth-brush, she was blasted with the spectacle of Chicken Bill and a Mexican girl in confidential converse just ahead. Deadwood Maggie, a bit violent of nature, had been in no wise calmed by her several years on the border. While not wildly in love, still her impulse was to dismantle, if not dismember, the senorita thus softly whispering and being whispered to by the recreant Chicken Bill. But on second thought Deadwood Maggie restrained herself. She would observe the full untruth of Chicken Bill. [Illustration: 0421] The next day, when Chicken Bill called on Dead-wood Maggie, he was met with a smothering flight of table furniture and told never to come back.