“Don’t you see? The tobacco is just about a quarter gold dust. I put just as much tobacco as I want into the cigarette, and I determine the values in each pan by the length of time it takes me to pan it out. While I’m smoking, the ashes from the cigarette are droppin’ down into the gold pan. Nobody thinks anything of that.”
Ashbury gave a low whistle.
“And then there’s another way,” Pete went on. “You climb up on a drill rig, an’ you take a marlinspike an’ spread the strands of the rope apart, then you put in a bunch of gold dust. You do that all the way down the whole length of the rope, then in the mornin’ when they start drillin’, the jar of the bit on the ground dislodged little particles of gold dust which drop down the casing into the hole.”
I said, “All right, Pete, what we want is to have those holes show so much more gold coming out than they’re putting in, that they’ll come to the conclusion they really have a bonanza. But it’ll have to be done so all the values show up after they get below the old level of work.”
“Shucks,” Pete said. “They don’t know where the old level of work was. That bunch don’t know anything. They’re just goin’ through motions. I watched ’em. They’re so damn clumsy, I swear to God I almost started over and said to the driller, ‘Look here, buddy, I don’t want to tell a man his business, but if you can’t make a better job of salting a claim than that, for God’s sake, stand to one side and let a guy that really knows how give you a few pointers.’ ”
Ashbury chuckled. Alta laughed out loud. I pushed the five one-hundred-dollar bills across the table toward Pete Digger.
“It’s all yours,” I said.
Pete picked up the bills, folded them, and put them in his pocket.
“When can you start?” Ashbury asked.
“You’re in a hurry?”