The wayfaring prospector greeted the information with a wide-mouthed smile.
“Yuh didn’t hardly need to tell me that—with them five critturs standin’ there a-hangin’ their heads, and you without any camp stuff ’r tools, and with two saddle hosses where yuh didn’t need only one. What’s yer game?”
Being fairly committed now, Philip went the entire length—with nothing hopeful to build upon save the big miner’s rough chivalry as he had seen it manifested in the Kansas Pacific day-coach months before. Frankly filling the blanks he had left in his earlier account of the summer’s experiences, he wound up with an anxious question:
“What am I to do? I can’t go on and leave my partner to stand off this robber gang alone. They’ll find our claim before I could get back. It’s our own creek they’re camping on, right now!” Then: “You say you are going out by way of Chalk Creek. I have a little money left; it isn’t much, but it’s all yours if you’ll take these horses and jades out to Nachtrieb’s ranch in the South Park and leave them there. Then I can go back from here and take my share of what’s coming to us.”
The big man got up and brushed the crumbs from his clothes.
“I can beat that all holler, if you’ll say the word. I sort o’ like your looks—liked ’em last spring when I chucked yuh in the seat with the li’l’ black-eyed gal. Yuh say yo’re aimin’ to hole up for the winter and work yer claim. S’pose yuh give me a job along with you and yer pardner and lemme go back with yuh? I can hold steel ’r pound it, and han’le powder. More’n that, I can shoot middlin’ straight when I aim to.”
“You mean you’d stand with us if the Neighbors bunch should try to jump our claim?”
“Why, suree! Yuh don’t reckon I’d go back on my bread and meat, do yuh?”
“But these beasts—what’s to be done with them?”
“I was comin’ to that. There’s a li’l’ ranch six-seven mile in the park ahead of us; it’s the place where I was aimin’ to get enough grub to walk out on. Queer old squatter runs it; li’l’ mite cracked in his upper story on religion, they say. He’ll winter the stock for yuh.”