"Twenty thousand!" he repeated, "twenty thousand devils--twenty thousand little demons from hell! What do you want to sell me out for--didn't I give you your interest? Well, listen, kid--you ever been to school? Then how much is one-sixth and one-third--add 'em together! Makes _three_-sixths, don't it--well, ain't that a half? I ain't educated, that's all right; but I can _think_, kid, can't I? Flip Flappum he wants to get control. Give him a half, under my contract, and he can take possession--and then where do _I_ git off? I git off at the same place I got off over at Wunpost; he's trying to freeze me out. So if you want to do me dirt, kid, when I've always been your friend, go to it and sell him your share. Take your paltry twenty thousand and let old Wunpost rustle--serves him right, the poor, ignorant fool!" He swayed about and Billy drew away from him, but her answer to Lapham was final. She would not sell out, at any price, without the consent of Wunpost. Lapham nodded and darted off--he was a man who dealt with facts and not with the moonshine of sentiment--and this time he fairly flew at Dusty Rhodes. He took him off to one side, where no one could listen in, and at the end of half an hour Mr. Rhodes had signed a paper giving a quit-claim to his interest in the mine. Old Whiskers was summoned from his attendance on the bottles, the lawyer presented his case; and, whatever the arguments, they prevailed also with the saloon-keeper, who signed up and took his check. Presumably they had to do with threats of expensive litigation and appeals to the higher courts, with a learned exposition of the weakness of their case and the air-tight position of Judson Eells; the point is, they prevailed, and Eells took possession of the mine, placing Pisen-face Lynch in charge. Old Whiskers folded his tent and returned to Blackwater, where many of the stampeders had preceded him; and Dusty Rhodes, with a guilty grin, folded his check and started for the railroad. Cole Campbell and his daughter, when they heard the news and found themselves debarred from the property, packed up and took the trail home, and when John C. Calhoun came out of his coma he was left without a friend in the world. The rush had passed on, across the Sink to Blackwater and to the gulches in the mountains beyond; for the men from Nevada had not been slow to comprehend that the Willie Meena held no promise for them.