"No, but look," he protested, "you folks have been my friends, and I owe you for taking care of my mules. I'd be glad to advance the money to put in an aerial tramway and you could pay it back out of the ore. That's the kind of road you want, one that will never wash out, and I know where you can get one cheap. There's one down by Goler that you can buy for almost nothing--I stopped and looked it over, coming up. And all you have to do, after you once get it installed, is to feed your ore into the buckets and send them down the canyon and the empties will come up with your supplies. It's automatic--works itself, and can't get out of order--just a long, double cable, swinging down from point to point and supplying its own power by gravity. Some class to that, and I tell you what I'll do--I'll lend the money to _you_!" "No!" she said as he reached down into his pocket, and she gazed at him reproachfully. "What do you mean?" he asked after a minute of puzzled silence, and she shook her head and pointed towards the house. Then she rose up quietly and led off down the path where the hollyhocks were still in full bloom. "You know what I mean," she said at the gate; "have you forgotten about the cloudburst?" "Why, no," he returned; "you don't mean to say----" "Yes, I do," she replied, "they think your money is accursed. Father says you didn't come by it honestly." "Oh, he does, eh?" sulked Wunpost; "and what do you think about it?" "I think the same," she answered promptly and looked him straight in the eye. "Well, well," he began with a sardonic smile, and then he thrust out his lip. "All right, kid," he said, "excuse me for living, but I wouldn't be that good if I could. It takes all the roar out of life. Now here I came back with some money in my pocket, to make you a little present, and the first thing you hand me is this: 'My money ain't come by honestly.' Well, that's the end of the present." He shrugged his shoulders and waited, but Billy made no reply. "I went up into the hills," he went on at last, "and discovered a vein of gold--nobody had ever owned it before. And I dug it out and showed the ore to Eells and asked him if he thought it was his. No, he said he couldn't claim it. Well, I took it to Los Angeles and sold it to a jeweler and here's the money he paid me for it--don't you think that money is honest?" He drew out a sheaf of bills and flicked the ends temptingly, but Billy shook her head. "No," she said, "because you don't dare to show the place where you claim you dug up that gold--and you told Mr. Eells you _stole_ it!"