"But now I want to ask the mon a thing," said a little shrewd-faced Scotchman. "Is he sure the thing down the hollow isn't salted? I got one salted mine in the colonies, and—"
"Salted!" said Andy, with an unnoticed flush on his face. "Salted! Do you suppose, gentlemen, I would bring you here to sell you a salted mine? You can ask anybody back in the city if my credit isn't first-class."
"Oh, mon," said a tall Highlander, "oh, mon, the feller's crazy. Salted—humph! We saw the gold with our own eyes. I say take the mine. I'll take a thousand shares at a pound. How much is the deal, did the mon say?"
"H'an 'undred thousand pounds. Cheap, I think," answered Devonshire.
"H'it's a go. We'll 'ave the stuff h'at the h'inn down h'in—what's the name of that town?" said the tall one.
"Gold City, sir, Gold City!" spoke up the excited host.
"Well, Gold City—that's the spot. We'll pay the cash there. My banker'll come h'in there to-night h'in the stage."
And as Job crept away, he heard them planning, between drinks, the future of the "Anglo-American Gold Mining Syndicate," with main office in London and place of operation in Grizzly county, State of California, the United States of America.
Job did not sleep that night. All through the dark hours he tossed on his straw bed over the stable. Andrew Malden was going to sell the Cove Mine for five hundred thousand dollars—and it was not worth one cent! It was an outrageous fraud. The boy felt like going and telling those capitalists. He felt a sense of personal guilt. Yet he almost hated those men. What difference if they were cheated?—they would never miss it; they deserved it. How much Uncle Andy needed the money! And it would be his own some day.
That thought touched Job's conscience to the center. He was a partner in the crime! He half rose in bed, resolving that he would face the crowd and tell all—how he had stood by and seen the old man salt the mine. Then he hesitated. What was it to him? If he told, it would ruin Andy. What business had he with it, anyhow? But all night long the wind whistled in through the cracks, "Thou shalt not steal," and Job tossed in agony of soul, wishing he had never climbed down the Pine Mountain trail to the Cove on that spring day when Andrew Malden salted the mine.