he declared. "I've been on your pay roll now for five minutes.
What's more, if it'll save money to croak this certain party and
be done with it, why, maybe that can be arranged, too. My new
wiggle stick may not find oil every crack, but I bet I can make it
point to half a dozen men who--"

Gray lifted an admonitory hand. "Patience! It may come to
something like that, but I intend to break him first. Can I arrive
at terms with you gentlemen?"

"Write your own ticket," McWade declared, and Mr. Stoner echoed
this statement with enthusiasm.

"Very well! Details later. Now, I shall give myself the pleasure
of calling upon my man and telling him exactly what I intend
doing." The speaker rose and shook hands with the three precious
scoundrels. When the door had closed behind him McWade inquired:
"Now what do you make of that? Going to serve notice on his bird!"

"Say! He's the hardest guy I ever saw," Stoner declared,
admiringly. Mallow spoke last, but he spoke with conviction.
"You said it, Brick. I had his number from the start. He's a
master crook, and--it'll pay us all to string with him."

Henry Nelson's activities in the oil fields did not leave him much
time in which to attend to his duties as vice-president of his
father's bank, for what success he and Old Bell Nelson had had
since the boom started was the direct result of the younger man's
personal attention to their joint operations. That attention was
close; their success, already considerable, promised to be