"I was coming out in a minute...."
"I can't have folks running in on him, Timber," said Winch, with a slow shake of the head, mumbling over a mouthful of ham and egg. "But if you'd just run in on him one second, to sort of let him know you was with him, you know, and then beat it, it might do him good."
"Can you leave for two or three hours? To go down with Al Blake and some of the boys to stake a string of mining claims down in Light Ladies' Gulch?"
"That's why the rifles?" said Winch. "Sure, I can go, leaving Charley Peters with full instructions. But I'll have to be back in, say, four hours at latest."
Standing turned to Mexicali Joe.
"Joe," he said, "how many friends have you got that we can put on the pay-roll for a few days at twenty-five dollars a day? To stake claims down in the Gulch?"
"Jesus Maria!" gasped Joe. "Twenty-five dollars a day? For each man? There would be one meelion men, Señor Caballero...."
"Take him in tow, Graham! Get a list of names from him, men to be reached in an hour's ride. As many as you can get, twenty or thirty or forty. And get them here ... quick."
Al Blake arrived from the Red Creek Mine. Stringing along after him came a dozen men of his choosing; big, uncouth, unshaved, rough-looking customers to the last man of them and yet ... as Standing and Blake agreed ... all good men! Good to carry out orders; to put up a fight against odds; to hang on and fight to the last ditch. Graham saw to it that every man Jack of them was fed and had his cigar from the Chief's private stock. The men grouped outside and looked at one another, but for the greater part wasted little breath in speculations and questionings, each realizing that his fellows knew as little as himself.