He had donned a fresh shirt, ahead of time, and evidently had tried to slick up generally. The water had been turned off from the sluice as if in preparation for a postponed clean-up.
"Take it 'asy," directed Pat, when Terry, having delivered the two pies contracted for, was about to spring into the pit and begin the business of the day. "Let the sluice be, so His Honor can clane up some o' the riffles by himself. An' we'll jist be loosenin' the dirt a bit here an' yon, for the sake o' keepin' busy an' makin' the place convanyent for him."
In fact, Pat was so particular in "jist loosenin' the dirt a bit" that Terry suspected him of not wishing to soil his shirt.
"Well, I'm thinkin' they're comin'," pronounced Pat. "Out o' the pit with ye an' wash your hands an' face so ye'll be a credit to the gulch. Sure, ye might have put on a clane shirt yourself—but mebbe 'tis better wan of us looks like a hard worker."
Terry had a notion to retort that probably Harry was wearing the clean shirt; they had only three shirts for the two of them, and the extra ought to go to the cook, of course.
All around, the other miners were unusually busy, so as to impress the great Horace Greeley, but they kept an eye directed down the gulch. Now a party, on muleback, were drawing near. They numbered half a dozen, conducted by John Gregory himself, and a little squad of onlookers trailed behind.
Occasionally they stopped, to survey operations; Pat, pretending to dig, awaited nervously.
"Mind ye, let me do the talkin'," he cautioned, to Terry. "An' be polite to His Honor, yourself. He's a great man. An' in case Oi ask ye to dig, take your dirt careless loike from the corner beside that white rock, for the rock's a lucky stone."
The party halted at Pat's pit and gazed in, and Pat and Terry, pausing in their show of work, looked up. Besides John Gregory, there were in the party Green Russell and Mr. Williams, the stage company superintendent, and Editor William Byers of the Rocky Mountain News, and—yes, Mr. Villard, the Cincinnati reporter.
Terry did not know whether Mr. Villard would remember him, or recognize him, anyway, in those clothes, which were much worse than when worn in Denver.