"It's this way," said Jack: "Most of the prospectors in the country are staked by bankers and business men outside. And when they at last make a strike, after years of failure, maybe, their backers generally step in and grab the lion's share. Consequently the men up here are sore on the city fellows; they have none of the hardships or the work they say; they just sit back comfortably and wait for the profits.
"Beckford said that he and his partner had been done a couple of times in this way, and they were out to get square with the bankers. When they found anything good they kept it dark, and went outside and sold some fake claims to raise the coin to work the good ones. Beckford said it was just as easy to sell fake claims as good ones, if you went about it right.
"I said," Jack went on, "they'll set the police after you. Beckford said: 'They can't. We don't make any misrepresentations. We're too smart. We make a mystery of it, and the sucker gets excited, and swallows it whole. We do the innocent game,' he said; 'we're the simple, horny-handed sons of soil from the North that ain't on to city ways. We make 'em think they're putting it all over us, and we sell out cheap. Two of us can work it fine!"
"I said," Jack continued, "'I don't see how you can get anybody to shell out real money unless you offer to come back and show them the place.' 'We always do offer to come back,' Beckford said, 'and we get all ready to come. But at the last moment one of us is took real sick, and the other refuses to leave his dyin' pardner. By that time the come-on is so worked up he comes across anyway!'"
During this recital Sir Bryson's face was a study. A kind of shamed chagrin restrained him from a violent explosion. Jack "had" him, as Jack would have said. The little beard was in danger of being plucked out bodily.
"You can go now," he said in an apoplectic voice.
"There was one thing more," Jack said at the door. "Beckford said that if you picked your man right there was no danger of a prosecution. 'Choose one of these guys that sets an awful store on his respectability,' he said, 'and he'll never blow on himself.'"
A deeper tinge of purple crept into Sir Bryson's puffing cheeks.
Jack lingered for a parting shot. "Any man who did get let in for such a game," he said with a great air of innocence, "hardly deserves any sympathy, does he, Sir Bryson?"
Sir Bryson was now beyond speech. He got to his feet; he pulled at his collar for more air, and he pointed mutely to the door.