All three of the men lived together like friends in this hut. This evening they were all very grave, not to say gloomy.
Old Dandy Quin, sitting flat upon the ground and engaged in unwinding the strips of sacking from his tired feet, was the first to break a silence that had continued some time.
“I’m gettin’ tired of this yere,” he grumbled. “Here we’ve been more’n two months working like mules, and never got a gleam o’ this yere moonlight. It’s moon-calves we are, all on us. Ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his gun we’d ’a’ starved! that’s what we would—’a’ starved! We never had no luck nowhere! Leastways, I never had! I’ve been nigh twenty years slaving in the mines, digging in the bowels of the yeth, working hard and living harder, and running like a luny after a jack-o’-lantern, from one grand discov’ry to another, but never got no more but hard work and harder living out of any on ’em, and now I’m sixty years old come next Martinmas, and I’m gettin’ tired on it,” he concluded, flinging his rags aside and caressing his poor feet.
“Dandy, ye poor ould craychur, haven’t ye pit a cint itself, nowhere?” questioned Mike in a sympathetic tone.
“Oh, jest eleven hund’ed dollar in the savings bank at Sacramento, and that I hev saved up, dollar be dollar, in the last twenty years, a-working hard an’ the—Regiment hard, and a-starving and a-stinting of meself to do it! And since here we have come to this Silver Moon Mine it hev been all loss and no gain! And as I said before, we’d ’a’ starved to death ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his gun. And now he is going back on us!” concluded Dandy in an injured tone and with a look of reproach at the giant.
“I should be sorry to do that,” said Longman, stroking his long, yellow beard. “But, Dandy, why won’t you go with me? I will gladly take you. You are alone here and growing old. Have you no natural longings to see your native country? Come! come along with me!”
“Why can’t you stay here? How do you know but to-morrow the stroke of a pick may strike a vein of solid silver running down to the very middle of the earth?” demanded Dandy.
“Ah, that’s it! Delusive hope has been the will-o’-the-wisp that has led you on from post to pillar for twenty years of unsuccess.”
“Well, after working twenty years for almost nothing, you wouldn’t have a man miss the chance of turning up a fortune with the very next stroke of his pick—a fortune that would pay him for all he has suffered—would you?”
“No, certainly not, if such luck were probable. But, Dandy, my friend, your pick has never struck a vein, and I think it never will. Be sensible. Draw your money from the savings bank, and come home to England with me. That sum will be a fortune to you in England, and set you up in any light business you may like; or buy you a small annuity, sufficient for your comforts for the rest of your life. Think of it, Dandy,” said Longman, with kindly interest in the lonely man.