"Uh-huh! And then s'pose she goes out again?"
"What's the use of supposing that?" Angus demanded irritably, for his hard luck was getting on his nerves. "What the devil are you croaking for? I've got troubles enough."
"I'm goin' to give you more," Rennie told him. "Look a-here!" He exhibited four or five small stones with fresh, yellow earth still clinging to them, and a piece of broken root. "What do you think of this lay-out?" he asked.
Angus frowned at the junk impatiently. The stones came from the layer of like stuff which lay beneath most of the land in the district. The root was fir, old, resinous, so that it had not rotted with the tree it had once helped to anchor, and apparently it was freshly broken off and twisted.
"I've been shoveling stuff like that for hours," he said. "What about it?"
"Quite a bit. You seen me nanitchin' round up there, and I s'pose you damned me for a lazy cuss. Well, up there's where I find them things."
"You could have found plenty of them without climbing."
"But I'm tellin' you I found these here above the slide."
Angus stared at him, slowly taking in his meaning.
"Above it!" he exclaimed.