"I'm sorry about that, too. I'd be better pleased if he was round your
age. No offense to you, Stan; but I'd name no places to your cousin if
I were you. When we get legal possession let him come out and see for
himself--leadin' a capitalist, if possible."

"Oscar's all right, I guess," protested Stan.

"But you can't do more than guess? Name him no names, then. I wish he was
younger," said Peter with a melancholy expression. "The world has a
foolish old saying: 'The good die young.' That's all wrong, Stanley. It
isn't true. The young die good!"




CHAPTER V


Something Dewing, owner of Cobre's Emporium of Chance, sat in his room in
the Admiral Dewey Hotel. It was a large and pleasant room, refitted and
over-furnished by Mr. Dewing at the expense of his fellow townsmen,
grateful or otherwise. It is well to mention here that, upon the tongues
of the scurrile, "Something," as a praise-name and over-name for Mr.
Dewing, suffered a sea change to "Surething"--Surething Dewing; just as
the Admiral Dewey Hotel was less favorably known as "Stagger Inn."

Mr. Dewing's eye rested dreamily upon the picture, much praised of
connoisseurs, framed by his window--the sharp encircling contours of
Cobre Mountain; the wedge of tawny desert beyond Farewell Gap. Rousing