“Let’s see where we left off,” he murmured, with a sleepy yawn. “I was headed for bed, wasn’t I? And you were chasing back to the assay shop to hang, draw, quarter and gibbet the outfit if it shouldn’t give us a fair shake. I hope you didn’t find it necessary to assassinate anybody?”
“Assassinate nothing!”—the news-bringer had stripped off coat and shirt, and was making a violent assault upon the wash-stand in the corner of the room. “Didn’t you hear what I said? We’ve struck it—struck it big!” Then, punctuated by vigorous sluicings of cold water: “The ‘Little Jean’s’ a thundering bonanza ... six separate assays ... one hundred and sixty-two dollars to the ton is the lowest ... the highest’s over two hundred. And it’s free-milling ore, at that! Harry, we’re rich—heeled for life—or we are going to be if we haven’t lost everything by acting like two of the most footless fools on God’s green earth.”
“‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us,’” quoted the play-boy, thrusting his legs out of bed and groping for his clothes. “For what particular sin do we pray forgiveness?”
“For leaving that claim of ours out of doors with nobody to watch it,”—this out of the mufflings of the towel. “It gives me a cold sweat every time I think of what may have happened since we left; what may be happening right now, for all we know!”
“What could happen?” Bromley queried. “It is our discovery, isn’t it? And we have posted it and are here to record it and file on it according to law.”
“Yes, but good Lord! Haven’t you been in these mountains long enough to know that possession is nine points of the law where a mining prospect is concerned? I knew it, but I took a chance because I thought we had that country over across the range pretty much to ourselves.”
“Well, haven’t we?”
“No; the woods are full of prospectors over there, so they told me at the sampling works; we just didn’t happen to run across any of them. Did you ever hear of a man named Drew?”
“You mean Stephen Drew, the man who bought the ‘Snow Bird’ for five millions?”
“That’s the man. He happened to be down at the sampling works this morning when our assays were handed out. I guess I made a bleating idiot of myself when I saw what we had. Anyway, Mr. Drew remembered meeting me in the railroad offices in Denver and he congratulated me. One word brought on another. He asked me if we wanted to sell the claim, and I told him no—that we were going back to work it through the winter. He said that was the proper thing, if we could stand the hardships; that if we did this and pulled through, he’d talk business with us next spring on a partnership or a lease.”