They shuffled to a table. The bartender brought glasses and a bottle. Then, uninvited, he pulled up a chair and sat with them. The rider looked at him pointedly.
"Oh, I'm in on this," asserted the bartender. "Daugherty is the Wells-Fargo man here. He won't talk to nobody but me—about business."
"What's that got to do with it?" queried the rider.
"Just what you'd notice, Saunders. Listen! The rat left a bag of dust in the Company's safe last trip. Daugherty says its worth mebby five hundred. He says the rat's goin' to bring in some more. Do I come in?"
"You're on," said the rider. "Now, see here, boys, we got to find out if he's filed on it yet, and what his name is, and then—"
"Mebby we'd better find out where it is first," suggested one.
"And then jump him?" queried the rider over his glass.
"And then jump him," chorused the group. "He's out there alone. It's easy." And each poured himself a drink, for which, strangely enough, no one offered to pay, and for which the bartender evidently forgot to collect.
Meanwhile the prospector toiled through the drought of that summer hoarding the little yellow flakes that he washed from the gravel in the cañon.