“Now,” said Hergan, leaning over and resting his arms on the table, “the plan is to form a big pool and buy oil, and make enough at one haul to go back to civilization and live like a king. That is the scheme, boys. It's good.” First Class Crawley opened his eyes slowly, and putting out his fat hand, began to caress the green cloth on the little round poker table. “Billy,” he said slowly, “I expect that is a good scheme, and I expect there is money in it,--may be tubs of money, but me and Martin aint speculators; we never so much as saw a ticking machine in our life. We don't know anything about new-fangled ways to get rich. We're both old fogies,--just common old fogies, and I reckon we had better stay out. Of course, I aint knocking on the scheme. It looks good, mighty good, but me and Martin aint young any longer; we're getting old and heavy on our pins, and we aint got no nerve like we used to have. Still I aint knocking. Me and Martin would like to see you make a pile of money, would n't we, Martin?” “Yes,” gurgled the owner of the Golden Horn, “we would that.” The Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan straightened up and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Of course, boys,” he said, “it's a gamble, but it's a ten-to-one shot better than a faro bank. If it goes our way, we will have all kinds of money; if it goes the other way, we are skinned to a standstill. I am tired of little gambles, and I am going to make one big play if I eat snowballs for the next twenty years. I would like to have you boys in, but if you don't believe that the thing is easy to beat, you can stay out.” An inspiration came to First Class Crawley, and he seized it with the avidity of a shark. “Billy,” he said, with amiable confidence, “you have no better friends in this here country' than me and Martin--has he, Martin?” “No,” muttered the fat owner of the oleaginous voice, “he aint.” “And me and Martin,” the proprietor went on, “would go in anything in the world that you wanted us to go in, and it would n't make no difference to us what it was, if you said it was a good thing. But me and Martin are pretty nigh sixty, and if we would go broke, we could never get on our feet no more. We are skeery, Billy; me and Martin are skeery, but we are ready to do anything for you that we can. We are ready to help you any way you want to be helped, because you are dead game, Billy,--that's what you are--you're dead game.” The wary Hiram Martin was totally in the dark as to what Crawley was probing for, but he had unlimited confidence in the proprietor of the Emporium, and he assented blandly. Crawley, he knew, followed no cold trail; Crawley worked no salted lead, and if he stooped to “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,” there was something in it for Crawley, and at no great distance. “Well,” responded the Secretary of State,