“That’s all right!” threatened Lynch, his voice tremulous with rage and weakness. “You wait till I git back my strength. I’ll fix you for this, you 152dirty, poisoning coward–you led me to that spring on purpose!”
“Yes, and you followed, you sucker!” returned Wunpost insultingly; “even your Injun had better sense than that. What did you expect me to do–leave you a canteen of good water so you could trail me up and pot me? No, you can consider yourself lucky I didn’t shoot you like a dog for following me off the trail. I gave you the road–what did you want to follow me for? By grab, it looked danged bad!”
“I’ll go where I please!” declared Lynch defiantly. “You’re hiding a mine that belongs to Mr. Eells and my instructions were to follow you and find it.”
“Well, if you’d followed your instructions,” returned Wunpost easily, “you sure would have found a mine. Do you see these two bags? Plum full of ore that I dug since I gave you the shake. Go back and report that to your boss.”
“You’re a liar!” snarled Lynch, but his eyes were on the ore-sacks and now they were gleaming with envy. And other eyes also were suddenly focussed on the gold, at which Wunpost surveyed the crowd intolerantly.
“You’re a prize bunch of prospectors,” he announced as from the housetops. “Why don’t you get out in the hills and rustle? That’s the way I got my start. But you Blackwater stiffs want to hang around town and let somebody else do the work. All you want is a chance to stake an extension on some 153big strike, so you can sell it to some promoter from Los!”
He grunted contemptuously and picked up the two big sacks while the citizens of Blackwater sneered back at him.
“Aw, bull!” scoffed one, “you ain’t got no gold! And if you have, by grab, you stole it. What about the Stinging Lizard?”
“Well, what about it?” retorted Wunpost, giving his bags to the Express agent, “─put down the value on that at seven thousand dollars.” This last was aside to the inquiring Express agent, but the crowd heard it and burst out hooting.
“Seven thousands cents!” yelled a voice; “you never saw seven thousand dollars! You’re a bull-shover and your mine was salted!”