“What’s happening?”
“They’re prospecting. It seems they prospect dredging land with a drill. Because a dredge can operate at a profit in ground where there are low values per cubic yard, it doesn’t require a great deal of gold to make a good job of salting a claim— And they can use the same gold over and over.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know, just a few dollars, I should judge.”
“How heavy are they salting it?”
“Apparently pretty heavy.”
“Then what’s going to happen?”
“The promoters will milk the company dry and skip out. They’d never dare to put a dredge on it. If they did, there would be such a discrepancy in values that it would show conclusively that the ground had been salted.”
He bit the end off a cigar and smoked for a while in silence. Twice, I caught him looking over the tops of his glasses at Alta.
“Well?” I asked.