He always spoke to me as pleasantly as he knew how, and once made some sort of a bluff about paying me back for my trouble in bringing him around.

However, I didn't pay much attention to that, being at the time almighty busy holding down my card games.
The last day of February I was sitting in my shack smoking a pipe after supper, when my one-armed friend opened the door a foot, slipped in, and shut it immediately.

By the time he looked towards me I knew where my six-shooter was.
"That's all right," said I, "but you better stay right there." I intended to take no more chances with that hook.
He stood there looking straight at me without winking or offering to move.
"What do you want ?" I asked.
"I want to make up to you for your trouble," said he.

"I've got a good thing, and I want to let you in on it." "What kind of a good thing ?" I asked.
"Treasure," said he.
"H'm," said I.
I examined him closely.

He looked all right enough, neither drunk nor loco.
"Sit down," said I--"over there; the other side the table." He did so.
"Now, fire away," said I.
He told me his name was Solomon Anderson, but that he was generally known as Handy Solomon, on account of his hook; that he had always followed the sea; that lately he had coasted the west shores of Mexico; that at Guaymas he had fallen in with Spanish friends, in company with whom he had visited the mines in the Sierra Madre; that on this expedition the party had been attacked by Yaquis and wiped out, he alone surviving; that his blanket-mate before expiring had told him of gold buried in a cove of Lower California by the man's grandfather; that the man had given him a chart showing the location of the treasure; that he had sewn this chart in the shoulder of his coat, whence his suspicion of me and his being so loco about getting it back.
"And it's a big thing," said Handy Solomon to me, "for they's not only gold, but altar jewels and diamonds.