The little man nodded as if it had been a compliment.
"I know, Bill. That is what I think myself sometimes; there is a tile just a little loose somewhere."
"Not at all, not at all," Bill said hotly; while Sim Howlett growled that he would like to hear any one else say so.
"Not off, you know," Frank said, "but just a little loose. I know, dear boys. You see my machine gets muddled up. It may work right enough sometimes, but the chances are that a cog has got bent, or that there is a little twist in a crank, and the thing never works quite even. It just catches, you know—rattles now and then. You may look it all over as much as you like, but you cannot spot where it is. You say it wants grease, but you may pour bucketfuls over it and it makes no difference. There"—and he broke off—"they are at it again up in that saloon."
Two or three pistol-shots rang out in the evening air.
"Things are not going on as they ought to," he went on quietly. "That is another machine that wants regulating. There are more bad men in this camp than there ought to be."
"Don't you worry yourself," Bill said hastily. "You cannot expect a mining camp to be a sort of paradise, doctor, and all the bad men kept outside. Things have been going on pretty smooth of late. It has been quite a peaceful camp."
"I don't like the ways of that man Symonds the gambler," the doctor said meditatively, with his head a little on one side.
"He is a bad lot," Sim Howlett agreed; "but he is going. I heard tell yesterday that he said he was going down to Frisco at the end of the week; and if he doesn't go, Bill and I will get a dozen other fellows to go with us and tell him that he had better git, or the air of this camp is likely to be unhealthy for him."
"Well, if that is so we need not think any more about it," the doctor said. "I dreamt last night I saw him with a bullet mark in the centre of his forehead; but perhaps that was a mistake, or the mark will not come at present. It will come sooner or later," he added musingly, "but perhaps not for a good time yet."