His eyes were on Sunny Oak. And that individual's unwashed face broadened into a cheerful grin. "Fightin' don't come under the headin' of work--proper," he said. "Guess I'm in." Bill turned on Sandy. "You ain't got the modest beauty o' the vi'let," he said, with saturnine levity. "How you feelin'?" "Sure good," exclaimed the widower. "But I'd feel better lettin' air into the carkis of James." "Good," muttered Bill. "An' you, Toby?" he went on, turning on the "remittance" man. "You're a heap fat, an' need somethin' to get it down. How you fancy things?" "I'd as lief scrap 'side these scalliwags as ag'in 'em," he replied, indicating his companions with an amiable grin. Bill nodded. "This yere Trust is a proper an' well-found enterprise," he said gravely. "As fer Minky, I guess we can count him in most anything that ain't dishonest. So--wal, this is jest precautions. Ther's nuthin' doin' yet. But you see," he added, with a shadowy grin, "life's mostly chock-full of fancy things we don't figger on, an' anyway I can't set around easy when folks gets gay. I'll be back to hum day after to-morrer, or the next day, an', meanwhiles, you'll see things are right with Zip. An' don't kep far away from Minky's store when strangers is around. Minky's a good friend o' mine, an' a good friend to most o' you, so--well, guns is good med'cine ef folks git gay, an' are yearnin' to handle dust what ain't theirs." "Them strangers?" suggested Sandy. "Is--?" Bill shrugged. "Strangers is strangers, an' gold-dust is gold-dust," he said shrewdly. "An' when the two git together ther's gener'ly a disease sets in that guns is the best med'cine for. That's 'bout all." CHAPTER XVI ZIP'S GRATITUDE What a complicated machinery human nature is! It seems absurd that a strongly defined character should be just as full of surprises as the weakest; that the fantastic, the unexpected, even the illogical, are as surely found in the one as in the other. It would be so nice, so simple and easy, to sit down and foreshadow a certain course of action for a certain individual under a given stress; and to be sure that, in human psychology, two and two make precisely four, no more and no less. But such is not the case. In human psychology two and two can just as easily make ten, or fifteen, or any other number; and prophecy in the matter is about as great a waste of time as worrying over the possibilities of the weather. The constitution of the nervous system cannot be estimated until put to the test. And when the first test has revealed to us the long-awaited secret, it is just as likely to be flatly contradicted by the second. The whole thing is the very mischief.