"So would I if I could."
"Can't you?"
Bartrow said "no," changed it to "yes," and then qualified the assent until it, too, became a negation.
"It's a pity," was the engineer's comment. "I believe another hundred feet would let you in for a decently good thing."
"So do I. But it might as well be a thousand. I know when I'm downed."
McMurtrie scoffed openly at that, taking his pipe from his mouth to say: "That's the one thing you don't know. You'll chew on it a while and go to Denver; and in a day or so your men will get orders to go on. I've seen you downed before. Why don't you go back East and marry a rich girl? That's the way to develop a mine."
It was a random shot, but it went so near the mark that Bartrow winced, and was thankful that the flaring miner's lamp was not an arc-light. And his rejoinder ignored the matrimonial suggestion.
"You're off wrong this time, Mac. I wish you didn't have to be. But it's no use. I'm in debt till I can't see out over the top of it, and I couldn't raise another thousand on the Myriad if I should try,—that is, not in Colorado. If I go to Denver it'll be to turn over my collateral and let everybody down as easy as I can."
"Then don't go yet a while."
Bartrow took the lamp and led the way out of the tunnel.