"You whistle very well," I told him.
That pleased him. His eyes lit up and an almost-smile flirted with the corners of his small mouth.
He nodded grave agreement.
"Been after butterflies, I see. I'll bet you didn't get any. This is the wrong season."
The light in his eyes snapped off. "Well, good-by," he said abruptly and very relevantly.
"Good-by," I said.
His whistling and his walking started up again in the same spot where they had left off. I mean the note he resumed on was the note which followed the one interrupted; and the step he took was with the left foot, which was the one he would have used if I hadn't stopped him. I followed him with my eyes. An unusual little boy. A most precisely mechanical little boy.
When he was almost out of sight, I took off after him, wondering.
The house he went into was over in that crumbling section which forms a curving boundary line, marking the limits of those frantic and ugly original mine-workings made many years ago by the early colonists. It seems that someone had told someone who had told someone else that here, a mere twenty feet beneath the surface, was a vein as wide as a house and as long as a fisherman's alibi, of pure—pure, mind you—gold.
Back in those days, to be a colonist meant to be a rugged individual. And to be a rugged individual meant to not give a damn one way or another. And to not give a damn one way or another meant to make one hell of a mess on the placid face of Mars.