“Cutter. I couldn’t help feeling that he wasn’t straight. He didn’t seem sincere.”
“He wasn’t ’round here at all, was he?”
“No. But there wasn’t any need of his coming. He just stays in the office and directs others. How easily he could warn the men who stowed away the stuff here not to come after it!”
“They made me mad with their suspicions!” Mundon exclaimed. “I should think that ’sperience would have taught ’em to suspect one of theirselves sooner than us. ’Twas only one man as showed any suspicions outright, and like as not he was one of the rogues himself. I was half a mind to tell him so once, but I knowed ’twouldn’t do no good.”
“Not a bit,” Ben agreed; “and it might do harm.”
“Mining’s a curious business. It’s the only business on earth, though, where you ain’t cuttin’ the ground away from under some other man’s feet. You’re just a-gettin’ somethin’ that everybody wants and needs, and, consequently, everybody’s glad you’re gettin’ it. It’s a gamble, and that’s why it’s so thunderin’ fascinatin’. There’s one drawback, though; it makes a man distrustful of his kind,—I s’pose ’cause it’s so mighty easy to get fooled. An old miner doesn’t b’lieve in any one but just himself—from principle. It’s astonishin’, how completely he kin pin his faith to rocks, and how he balks when it comes to tryin’ it on human nature.”
“Father wasn’t much so,” remarked Ben; “but he was an exception, I suppose.”
“He wasn’t rich, was he?”
“No; although he often thought he was. His riches never came near enough to capture.”
“That’s it, you see. But you take an old miner who’s made his fortunes, and lost ’em through havin’ salted mines worked off on him,—if he ain’t the scariest bird ever seen! Talk about saltin’ a bird’s tail! Why, he wouldn’t trust his own twin brother!”