"Yes--but it's her deal. You remember when Billy Brue was playin' seven-up with a stranger in the Two-Hump saloon over to Eden, and Chiddie Fogle the bartender called him up front and whispered that he'd jest seen the feller turn a jack from the bottom. 'Well,' says Billie, looking kind of reprovin' at Chiddie, 'it was _his deal,_ wa'n't it?' Now it's sure this blond party's deal, and we better reckon ahead a mite before we start any roughhouse with her. You're due to find out if you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be sporty like Billy Brue was." "Pretty bad, isn't it? I never suspected pa was in anything of this sort." "Well, I knew Dan'l J. purty well, and I spleened against some of his ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so much. But them New York folks--well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and enlightenment,--and remember your ma and Pish." "Of course the exposure would mean a lot of cheap notoriety--" "Well, and not so all-fired cheap at that, even if we beat. I've heard that lawyers are threatenin' to stop this thing of workin' entirely fur their health. There's that to weigh up." "But I hate to be done." "Well, wouldn't you be worse done if you let a matter of money, when you're reekin' with it, keep you from protectin' your pa's name? Do you want folks to snicker when they read that 'lovin' husband and father' business on his gravestone? My! I guess that young woman and her folks we met the other day'd be tickled to death to think they knew you after they'd read one of them Sunday newspaper stories with pictures of us all, and an extry fine one of the millionaire's dupe, basely enticed from her poor but honest millinery business in Spokane." Percival shuddered. "Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be settled within reason I suppose we better give up." "That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks." They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops.