"Why should they?" I asked, scenting a possible source of information.
"They own the ground on t' other side of ye, and ever'body allowed they owned this."
"But their vein runs the other way—southeast and northwest," Gifford interposed.
The old man winked his single eye.
"Ever been in their workin's?"
Gifford shook his head.
"N'r nobody else that could 'r would talk," said our ancient. "You can't tell nothin' about which-a-way a vein runs in this here hell's half-acre. Bart Blackwell's the whole show on the Lawrenceburg, and he's a hawg. He's the one that ran them Nebraska farmers off'm the Mary Mattock down yander: give 'em notice that he was goin' to sink on them upper claims o' his'n at the gulch head, and that his sump water'd have to be turned loose to go where it had a mind to—which'd be straight down the gulch, o' course. The farmers they allowed that'd swamp 'em worse'n they was already swamped—ez it would—so they up and quit. Blackwell, he's a cuss, with a snoot like a hawg. He don't want no neighbors."
I had been observing the old man's face as he talked. It was villainous only in its featurings.
"Which are you; a prospector or a miner?" I asked.
"A little b'ilin' o' both, I reckon," was his rejoinder. "I driv' the first tunnel in the Buckeye, and they made me boss on the two-hundred-foot level. I kin shoot rock with any of 'em's long as I kin make out to let the bug-juice alone."