affected him more strongly than if he had already paid down the million
he expected to get from the mine. I don't know that I have indicated as
plainly as I might that universal preference on the part of mankind to
get something from nothing, and to acquire the largest return for
the least possible expenditure, but I question my right to say that
Roscommon was much more reprehensible than his fellows.

But it told upon him as it did upon all over whom the spirit of the
murdered Concho brooded,--upon all whom avarice alternately flattered
and tortured. From his quiet gains in his legitimate business, from the
little capital accumulated through industry and economy, he lavished
thousands on this chimera of his fancy. He grew grizzled and worn over
his self-imposed delusion; he no longer jested with his customers,
regardless of quality or station or importance; he had cliques to
mollify, enemies to placate, friends to reward. The grocery suffered;
through giving food and lodgment to clouds of unimpeachable witnesses
before the Land Commission and the District Court, "Mrs. Ros." found
herself losing money. Even the bar failed; there was a party of
"Blue Mass" employees who drank at the opposite fonda, and cursed the
Roscommon claim over the liquor. The calm, mechanical indifference with
which Roscommon had served his customers was gone. The towel was no
longer used after its perfunctory fashion; the counter remained unwiped;
the disks of countless glasses marked its surface, and indicated other
preoccupation on the part of the proprietor. The keen grey eyes of the
claimant of the "Red-Rock Rancho" were always on the lookout for friend
or enemy.

Garcia comes next. That gentleman's inborn talent for historic
misrepresentation culminated unpleasantly through a defective memory;
a year or two after he had sworn in his application for the "Rancho,"