"Well, I do; just happen to. You know how it lies--on the western slope of Little Butte ridge?" "Yes." "That is where it lies now. But the original openings were made on the eastern slope of the butte. They didn't pan out very well, and Flemister began to look for a victim to whom he could sell. About that time a man, whose name I can never recall, took up a claim on the western slope of the ridge directly opposite Flemister. This man struck it pretty rich, and Flemister began to bully him on the plea that the new discovery was only a continuation of his own vein straight through the hill. You can guess what happened." "Fairly well," said Lidgerwood. "Flemister lawed the other man out." "He did worse than that; he drove straight into the hill, past his own lines, and actually took the money out of the other man's mine to use as a fighting fund. I don't know how the courts sifted it out, finally; I didn't follow it up very closely. But Flemister put the other man to the wall in the end--'put it all over him,' as your man Bradford would say. There was some domestic tragedy involved, too, in which Flemister played the devil with the other man's family; but I don't know any of the details." "Yet you say Flemister is a born gentleman, as well as a born buccaneer?" "Well, yes; he behaves himself well enough in decent company. He isn't exactly the kind of man you can turn down short--he has education, good manners, and all that, you know; but if he were hard up I shouldn't let him get within roping distance of my pocket-book, or, if I had given him occasion to dislike me, within easy pistol range." "Wherein he is neither better nor worse than a good many others who take the sunburn of the Red Desert," was Lidgerwood's comment, and just then the waiter opened the door a second time to say that luncheon was served. "Don't forget to remind me that I'm to tell you Gridley's story, Howard," said the president, rising out of the depths of his lounging-chair and stripping off the dust-coat, "Reads like a romance--only I fancy it was anything but a romance for poor Lizzie Gridley. Let's go and see what the cook has done for us." At luncheon Lidgerwood was made known to the other members of the private-car party. The white-haired old man who had been dozing in his chair was Judge Holcombe, Van Lew's uncle and the father of the prettier of the two young women who had been entertaining Jefferis, the curly-headed collegian. Jefferis laughingly disclaimed relationship with anybody; but Miss Carolyn Doty, the less pretty but more talkative of the two young women, confessed that she was a cousin, twice removed, of Mrs. Brewster.