The Paiute nodded. It was evident that he “savvied.” He had shown Landis a copper ledge off in the mountains, two years before, and Landis had given him a hundred dollars. It was Indian Nick’s opinion that Landis was “heap pretty good man;” and he now recognized the value of silence until such a time as Landis would let him speak. Other white men had, before this, got him to show them prospects upon promises, and—without an exception—had cheated him out of his due. But Jon Landis was different. This big, quiet man who talked but little, and never laughed at all—him he would be “partner” with, and show him the place down by the river where the black rock sample came from, and the bluffs where—underneath—a queer little spring (that wasn’t water) oozed forth, and lost itself a dozen feet away in the muddy current of the greater stream.
Indian Nick didn’t know what that stream—a very, very little stream—was; and he didn’t care to know. Indians as a rule are not inquisitive. He only knew it looked “heap greasy;” and if the black rock on the sandy mesa above was like the piece that Landis showed him, saying it was from California—then Nick was to have another hundred dollars.
Now that Landis had “guessed” that the rock sample was the same sort, Nick (seeing a hundred dollars easily earned) looked furtively about him as they stood on the railroad track—where the section house and the freight house were sole evidence of a station—to discover if they had been observed talking together. For even a Paiute knows that precaution may prevent a secret from being suspected. No, no one had seen them together. The section foreman was out on the road with his men, and the telegraph operator had not come out of his office in the freight house since he had reported the train that had just brought Landis back to Nevada. No one from the town (as the mining camp up in the foothills was called) had come down to the station that day. The Indian was satisfied; no one would guess that he and Landis were “partners.”
“You come now; I show you that place. He not far—can walk.”
“How far?”
“Maybe two mile, I think. You see. You come now?”
Landis deliberated. Presently he asked:
“You got a shovel, Nick? Got a pick at your wick-i-up?”
“I got um ol’ one—not much good.”
“Well, never mind; they’ll do for today. You go get ’em, and trot on ahead. Where is it?”