Salt of the Earth
By Tuttle, W. C.
In the sun-baked ruins of Painted Post—a desert outpost that boasts a single saloon, a shuttered store, and a population of four idle, fast-talking prospectors—survival depends less on striking gold than on outtalking the next man. The quartet scrapes by on bad whiskey, worthless claims, and tall tales, always alert for a mark worth fleecing. So when two outlandishly dressed strangers wander in flush with cash, trailing burros packed with rocking chairs and garden tools, the locals scent the easiest fortune they'll ever make. They hatch a scheme to "salt" a barren mine and sell it to the greenhorns at a tidy profit. But on this frontier, appearances run deep and the distance between the swindler and the swindled is shorter than anyone reckons.
Publisher: The Ridgway Company (in Adventure Magazine)
First published: 1918