Wilkins appeared to reflect. "Hanging off for a bigger figure, but there are points I'm not quite clear about. Mackinder's not quite the man to play that game—I guess I know him well, and if it had been left to him, once he saw there were dollars in the thing, he'd have jumped right on to them and lit out for the cities to raise Cain with them. Now, I kind of wonder if there's a bigger man behind him."
"That's my end of the business," said Devine, with a little grim smile. "I'll take care of it. There are men in the cities who would find any dead-beat dollars if he wanted them for a fling at me. The question is—What about the mine? You feel reasonably sure we're going to strike ore that will pay for the crushing at the end of that adit?"
Wilkins glanced round at the forest, and then lowered his voice a trifle, though it was some distance off and there was nobody else about.
"We have got to, sir—and it's there if it's anywhere," he said. "You have seen the yield on the lower workings going down until it's just about worth while to keep the stamps going, and though none of the boys seem to notice anything, there are signs that are tolerably clear to me that the pay dirt's running right out. Still, I guess the chances of striking it again rich on the different level are good enough for me to put 'most every dollar I have by me in on a share of the crushings. I can't say any more than that."
"No," said Devine, drily. "Anyway, I'm going on with the adit. But about the timber?"
"Well, we will want no end of props, and that's a fact. It's quite a big contract to hold up the side of a mountain when you're working through soft stuff and crumbly rock, and the split-logs we've been worrying along with aren't going to be much use to us. We want round props, grown the size we're going to use, with the strength the tree was meant to have in them."
Devine looked thoughtful. "Then I'll have to get you them. Say nothing to the boys, and see nobody who doesn't belong to the gang you have sent there puts his foot in any part of the mine. It is, of course, specially necessary to keep the result of the crushings quiet. I'm not telling you this without a reason."
Wilkins went back into the adit, and Devine proceeded to flounder round the boundaries of the Englishman's abandoned ranch, which he had bought up for a few hundred dollars, chiefly because of the house on it. It consisted, for the most part, of a miry swamp, which the few prospectors who had once or twice spent the night with him said had broken the heart of the Englishman after a strenuous attempt to drain it, while the rest was rock outcrop, on which even the hardy conifers would not grow. Devine, who wet himself to the knees during his peregrination, had a survey plan with him, but he could see no means of extending his rights beyond the crumbling split-rail fence, and inside the latter there were no trees that appeared adapted for mining purposes. Willows straggled over the wetter places, and little, half-rotten pines stood tottering here and there in a tangled chaos a man could scarcely force his way through, but when he had wasted an hour or two, and was muddy all over, it became evident that he was scarcely likely to come upon a foot of timber that would be of any use to him. He had, of course, been told this, but he had on other occasions showed the men who pointed out insuperable difficulties to him that they were mistaken.
Devine, however, was, as that fact would indicate, not the man to be readily turned aside. He wanted mine props, and meant to obtain them, and, though his face grew a trifle grimmer, he climbed the hillside to where Brooke was busy knee-deep in water at the dam. He signed to him, and then, taking out his cigar-case, sat down on a log and looked at the younger man.
"Take one!" he said.