"How much will you charge me? And another thing—do I have to pay you for waiting until spring?"
"No, you need not pay us a cent. We have enough to last us all winter. I was just wondering what I was going to do when spring came, and that made me feel blue. But if you are going to hire us—you will be gone three or four months, won't you?"
Yes, Claus thought that he would be gone as long as that. Then he asked, "How far is Dutch Flat from here?"
"Two hundred miles."
The two then began an earnest conversation in regard to the money that was to be paid for guiding Claus up to Dutch Flat. The latter thought he had worked the thing just about right. It would be time enough to tell him who Julian and Jack were, and to talk about robbing them, when he knew a little more concerning the man and his partner. He had not seen the other man yet, but he judged that, if he were like the miner he was talking to, it would not be any great trouble to bring them to his own way of thinking.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CLAUS HEARS SOMETHING.
Never had a winter appeared so long and so utterly cheerless as this one did to Solomon Claus. The first thing he did, after he made the acquaintance of Jake and his partner, was to change his place of abode. Jake was as ready to ask for cigars as Claus had been, and the latter found that in order to make his money hold out he must institute a different state of affairs. He found lodgings at another second-rate hotel in a distant part of the city, but he found opportunity to run down now and then to call upon Bob and Jake,—those were the only two names he knew them by,—to see how they were coming along, and gradually lead the way up to talking about the plans he had in view. It all came about by accident. One day, when discussing the haunted mine, Claus remarked that he knew the two boys who were working it, and hoped they would have a good deal of dust on hand by the time he got here.
"Then they will freeze to death!" declared Bob. "What made you let them go there, if you knew the mine was haunted?"
"Oh, they are not working it now," said Claus. "They are in St. Louis, and are coming out as soon as spring opens. They are plucky fellows, and will find out all about those ghosts before they come back."