“Well, there’s no danger of ours being salted.”
“No; ’cause ’twasn’t thought to be a mine. I’ve seen some queer tricks played in that line. Once I knew a man who went to look at a mine. He saw the samples taken from all over the mine, put ’em in canvas bags himself, and never took his eyes off these bags till they was sealed up with his private seal. Just as the rest of the party was gettin’ into the stage to leave, the man who was a-thinkin’ of buyin’ the mine had a kind of a feelin’ that he’d ben fooled. He couldn’t explain it nohow, but he just had that feelin’. So, he wouldn’t get on that stage, but he went all over the mine a second time and took another set of samples. Well, the assays told the story. The first set went more’n a hundred dollars to the ton, and the last set went less ’n a dollar.”
“How did they break the seals?”
“They didn’t break ’em. They salted the bags after he sealed ’em by squeezin’ a quill toothpick through the canvas and blowin’ gold-dust into ’em. I don’t wonder that——”
Mundon was interrupted by a pounding on the gates.
“I’ll go,” said Ben.
When he had unfastened the gates, two men walked into the yard. The first handed Ben a paper.
“What does this mean?” Ben wonderingly asked. He did not at first comprehend the meaning of the proceeding, but his eye caught the word “injunction,” and he knew that meant “stop.”
“It’s an injunction served upon you,” the man replied.