"Oh, I don't say it hasn't got a future."
"What! Don't you know the boom's busted?"
"Well, no."
"Has. Tax begun it. Too many cheechalkos are finishing it. Klondyke?" She laughed. "The Klondyke's goin' to hell down-grade in a hand-car."
Scowl Austin was up, ready, as usual, to relieve Seymour of half the superintending, but never letting him off duty till he had seen the new shift at work. As the Boy limped by with the German, Austin turned his scowl significantly towards the Colonel's tent.
"Good-mornin'—good-night, I mean," laughed the lame man, just as if his tongue had not run away with him the last time the two had met. It was not often that anyone spoke so pleasantly to the owner of No. 0. Perhaps the circumstance weighed with him; at all events, he stopped short. When the German had gone on, "Foot's better," Austin asserted.
"Perhaps it is a little," though the lame man had no reason to think so.
"Lucky you heal quick. Most people don't up here—livin' on the stale stuff we get in this——country. Seymour said anything to you about a job?"
"No."
"Well, since you're on time, you better come on the night shift, instead o' that lazy friend o' yours."