"You mean—"
"Can't you understand plain English?" she said, irritated at such obtuseness. "I got worried thinkin' it over, for it was me told that pardner o' yours—" She smiled wickedly. "I expected McGinty'd have some fun with the young feller, but I didn't expect you'd be such a Hatter." She wound up with the popular reference to lunacy.
The Colonel pulled up his great figure with some pomposity. "I don't understand."
"Any feller can see that. You're just the kind the McGintys are layin' for." She looked round to see that nobody was within earshot. "Si's been layin' round all winter waitin' for the spring crop o' suckers."
"If you mean there isn't gold out at McGinty's gulch, you're wrong; I've seen it."
"Course you have."
He paused. She, sweeping the Gold Nugget with vigilant eye, went on in a voice of indulgent contempt.
"Some of 'em load up an old shot-gun with a little charge o' powder and a quarter of an ounce of gold-dust on top, fire that into the prospect hole a dozen times or so, and then take a sucker out to pan the stuff. But I bet Si didn't take any more trouble with you than to have some colours in his mouth, to spit in the shovel or the pan, when you wasn't lookin'—just enough to drive you crazy, and get you to boost him into a Recordership. Why, he's cleaned up a tub o' money in fees since you struck the town."
The Colonel moved uneasily, but faith with him died hard.
"McGinty strikes me as a very decent sort of man, with a knowledge of practical mining and of mining law—"