“I’m a drivin’. Gimme time. Say, Mr. Westcott: the cuss ’d struck it rich up there, like I told you. Got a vein o’ yeller laid open like a roarin’ buttercup.”
“Got it staked and located, too, I suppose,” the lawyer said, with a sneer. “Bite it off, Broome: what are you driving at?”
“I tell you I am bitin’ it off,” was the sullen rejoinder. “I tell you there’s gold to burn up there. It’s the damndest, likeliest place you ever see.”
“Why didn’t you prospect a little too?”
“Prospect!” Broome swore, savagely.
“That there locoed buffalo he tried to kill me, when he found I’d discovered the vein. He’d took me up the trail clean dopy, an’ he brought me down blindfold, with my hands tied, on the back of a damned little she-ass; so I wouldn’t know how to git back there.”
“Oh,” Westcott jeered. “And what you want of me is to take you by the little hand and lead you back there and let you dig?”
“No I don’t neither! I got a good scheme, an’ I want ter let you in on it. You done a lot fer me, once, Mr. Westcott.”
“You bet I did,” was Westcott’s response. “You owe me the price of your own neck, whatever that may be worth to you; but I can’t see where you’re going to pay it out of this scheme.”
“I’d a done it all right by now if that feller hadn’t nearly killed me,” Broome said.