The Boy turned his head round again with reviving interest in his own group.
"Look here, Si," Maudie was saying: "if you want to let a lay on your new claim to anybody, mind it's got to be me."
But the mackinaw man was glancing speculatively over at another group. In haste to forestall desertion, the Boy inquired:
"Do you know of anything good that isn't staked yet?"
"Well, mebbe I don't—and mebbe I do." Then, as if to prove that he wasn't overanxious to pursue the subject: "Say, Maudie, ain't that French Charlie over there?" Maudie put her small nose in the air. "Ain't you made it up with Charlie yet?'"
"No, I ain't."
"Then we'll have another drink all round."
While he was untying the drawstring of his gold sack, Maudie said, half-aside, but whether to the Colonel or the Boy neither could tell: "Might do worse than keep your eye on Si McGinty." She nodded briskly at the violet checks on the mackinaw back. "Si's got a cinch up there on Glory Hallelujah, and nobody's on to it yet."
The pianola picked out a polka. The man Si McGinty had called French Charlie came up behind the girl and said something. She shook her head, turned on her heel, and began circling about in the narrow space till she found another partner, French Charlie scowling after them, as they whirled away between the faro-tables back into the smoke and music at the rear. McGinty was watching Jimmie, the man at the gold scales, pinch up some of the excess dust in the scale-pan and toss it back into the brass blower.
"Where did that gold come from?" asked the Colonel.