“Oh, dry up!” came the gambler’s rejoinder. “You’re a fool! You haven’t got inside the mine yet. Now, mates, I reckon this is our best lay: To-day is Wednesday. We need time to get an outfit to live on cached near here, somewheres, so that after we’ve captured the place we can hold the fort for a little while, if they should come back at us. You see we’ve got to give ’em back their grub and furniture, cause if we take that it’s stealin’, and we aint no thieves, leastwise not in this deal.”
“A liar should hae a gude memory,” thought Sandy.
“And, besides, they could drop on us for that, whereas this is a free country and we’ve a perfect right to jump a man’s claim—”
“Pervided we kin hold it!” Old Bob interrupted.
“Yes, of course. Well, as I was a-saying, to-day’s Wednesday; and I reckon Saturday night’s about our figure. We’ll come up here in the evening, and then along about twelve o’clock we’ll capture this ’ere mine, and then bounce ’em right out o’ their beds and send ’em down the cañon. Next day, if they’re civil, we’ll give ’em their blankets and notice to leave. And if they aint civil—”
The villain paused and glared right and left at his companions, with a satanic grin on his face. Slowly drawing from the leg of his rust-red cowhide boot a huge knife, he finished the sentence with slow and venomous emphasis,—
“We’ll give ’em this!”
After that boodthirsty remark the three conspirators rose from their seats and scrambled down the farther slope of the dump.
So cold and stiff was the young Highlander with lying in wet clothes upon the rough rocks, that at first he could hardly travel; but slowly picking his way down to the cabin he made haste first to build a fire, and after
