"Then I guess there's nobody could size you up, and put you in the grade you belong to. You wouldn't take Devine's dollars when he wanted to hire you, and now you're building flumes and dams for him. I can't see any difference. There's no sense in it."
"I'm afraid there is really very little myself. It's rather like splitting hairs, isn't it? Still, there is, at least, what one might call a distinction. You see, I took over another man's contract, and what I'm doing now doesn't make it necessary for Devine to favor me with his confidence."
Saxton shook his head in a fashion that suggested he considered his comrade's case hopeless. "And it's just his confidence we want!" he said. "You don't seem able to get hold of the fact that you can't make very many dollars and keep your high-toned notions at the same time. The thing's out of the question. Now, I once heard a lecture on the New England States long ago, and pieces of it stuck to me. There were two or three of the hard old Puritans made their little pile cutting Frenchmen's and Spaniards' throats in the Gulf of Mexico, and built meeting-houses when they came home and settled down. Still, they had sense enough to see that what was the correct thing among the Quakers and Baptists of New England was quite out of place on the Caribbean Sea."
Brooke felt that there was truth in this, but he meant, at least, to cling to the distinction, even though he disregarded the difference, and Saxton seemed to realize it.
"Well," he said resignedly, "we may do something with that prop sling when we jump the claim. How are you getting on about the mine?"
"In point of fact, I'm not getting on at all. Each time I try to saunter into the workings, I am civilly turned out again. Devine, it seems, will not even let the few men who work on top in."
Saxton appeared to reflect. "Now, I wonder why," he said. "He's too smart to do anything without a reason, and he's not afraid of you, or he'd never have had you round the place. Still, you'll have to get hold of the facts we want before we can do anything, and I'm not quite sure what use I'll make of those timber-rights in the meanwhile. They cost me quite a few dollars, and it may be a while yet before anybody takes them from me. Building that slingway isn't quite what I expected from Devine after buying up forests to oblige him."
"Well, I will do what I can, but I wish Devine would give me those dollars back of his own accord. I'm almost commencing to like the man."
Saxton shook his head. "You can't afford to consider a point of that kind when it's against your business," he said. "Anyway, if you can give me a blanket or two, I'll get some sleep now. I have to be on the trail again by sun-up."
Brooke gave him his own spruce-twig couch, and made him breakfast in the chilly dawn on a kerosene stove, and then was sensible of a curious relief as his confederate vanished into the filmy mists which drifted down the gorge.