Barnes pressed down the ashes in his pipe. He relighted the tobacco with deliberate carefulness.
“You seem to know me,” broke in the young man uneasily, “but I’m hanged if I remember you.”
“No. My name is Barnes. I met your family a while ago.”
“Is that a fact?” exclaimed Van Patten.
The information seemed to check rather than promote loquaciousness on the part of the young man. He settled back uneasily in his seat and drummed nervously on the table. Barnes discerned now a certain family resemblance which would have been more pronounced had the man been in more conventional Eastern garb. There was nothing in his face to indicate viciousness—at worst nothing but stubbornness and selfishness.
“I understand you’re interested in mining?” began Barnes, in the hope of getting him to talk again.
“Up to my neck.”
“You left ‘The Lucky Find’ well?” he inquired much as John had inquired of him.
“You mean to say they haven’t heard back here of the strike?”
“Strike?”