“Jim-twin Allen horned in suddenlike when the boys was thinkin’ of stoppin’ the little man, so I figger the little runt with the whiskers is Jim’s brother—‘Jack-twin’ Allen.”
Kane shrugged, turned on his heel, and followed Big Anderson and Hi Stevens into the Ace High. A miner leaped down and whispered to a companion.
“If that there rip-snortin’ hellion of a Wyoming sheriff is here, hell is sure goin’ to pop, an’ Baldy is thinkin’ fast an’ hard!”
“’Tain’t safe to talk!” the other mumbled out of the corner of his mouth and turned away.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MINERS’ MEETING
Pop Howes’ mine, the American Beauty, was about a mile from town on the south side of the mining gulch where the walls became sheer and closed in. At the foot of the slope he had built a small three-room shack where he and his wife lived. Back of this were the barns, a donkey engine, and a narrow building where his Mexican workers formerly ate and slept. But the bunk house was now deserted, the engine silent. No work was going on in the shaft.
For thirty years Pop Howes had worked and saved; now he had been robbed and was broke. He had exhausted his credit at the bank. His eyes were bitter as they stared at the empty buildings.
The gulch had been formed by a cataclysm that had split a mountain when the world was young. On the north side of the gulch was the El Dorado Mine that was making a fortune for its owners. Pop Howes believed that the El Dorado lode extended through the whole mountain, on the south as well as the north side of the gulch, and that if he could run his shaft down another hundred feet, to the same level as the El Dorado shaft, he, too, would strike a rich, ore-bearing vein.
Jim Allen, who had accompanied Pop from town, glanced with ready sympathy at the old man’s brooding face. “So the bank wouldn’t give yuh a nickel?” he asked.
“Not a nickel, darn ’em! They was only too glad to loan me five thousand last year, but now they acts as if I was wantin’ to steal money from ’em!” Pop cried wrathfully.