“And you raking in money by the shovelful!” he gasped.
“No,” said Jim, decisively, “I wasn’t quite doing that. Anyway, it was your money. I got only a share of it; and you didn’t figure I’d stay back there weighing out flour and sugar when there was a gold strike on?”
Saunders contrived to master his anger, and merely made a little gesture of resignation. He was acquainted with the restlessness which usually impels the average westerner to throw up ranch or business and strike into the bush when word of a new mineral find comes down, though much is demanded of those who take the gold trail, and, as a rule, their gains are remarkably small.
“Whom did you leave to run the store?” asked Saunders.
“Nobody,” said Jim. “Except two Siwash, there was nobody in the settlement; and, anyway, the store was most empty when the boys came along.” He indicated the strangers with a wave of his hand. “As they hadn’t a dollar between them I told them I’d give them credit, and they could pack up with them anything they could find in the place.”
Saunders appeared to find some difficulty in preserving a befitting self-restraint, but he accomplished it.
“What did you do with the money you’d taken already?” was his next question.
“Wrapped it up in a flour-bag,” said the man from Okanagan, cheerfully. “Then I pitched the thing into an empty sugar-keg. Wrote up what the boys owed you, and put the book into the keg too. Anyway, I wrote up as much as I could remember.”
Saunders looked at Devine, who stood by, and there was contempt beyond expression in his eyes.
“That,” he said, “is just the kind of blamed fool he is.”