"I know something of your company and your methods," he said coolly. "You're a pack of damned thieves. And, since you ask it, I do think that you run around all loaded with your proposition. Your game is to pay a man enough to get him drunk and keep him drunk for a spell; that's his cash bonus; he gets the rest in stocks. Then you break him with assessments and kick him out. I'm not talking business to-day, thank you," he ended drily.
Madden looked at him keenly, making a swift appraisal which had in it something of the nature of a readjustment. Then he laughed again.
"Look here, Mr. Drennen," he said confidentially, leaning close to the man on the bunk, "my company has a bigger financial backing than any other in the country. We are willing to take what we can get as cheap as we can get it, of course I'll admit that. At the same time if you've got a gold mine we're ready and we're able to pay all it's worth. You've got the brains to know that the day has passed for a man to work his own claim if there's anything in it. You've got to sell out to somebody. Why not to the Canadian?"
Now, Madden, having heard the tale of Drennen's dice game with a canvas bag of virgin gold backing his play and of a fight in which Drennen had gone down from a bullet fired by Ernestine Dumont, had made up his mind that in the dugout he would come upon a certain type of man which he knew well. He expected to find Drennen half sodden with liquor, garrulous, boastful and withal easy to handle. His estimate changed swiftly, but he altered merely in slight detail his plan of attack. After a keen glance about the dugout his words came smoothly. Drennen was no illiterate miner but he was sorely ridden by poverty, just the same.
"Give me your word that you've really found the real stuff," Madden said, "and we'll talk business. Oh, that isn't the ordinary course, to be sure, but I'm willing to make an exception after seeing you; you are not the ordinary man. Come out with me to Lebarge; we'll pick up a lawyer and sign some papers. For your protection and mine, understand. Then we'll have a look at your claim. Incidentally," his hand coming suddenly from his pocket with a roll of bills in it, "you can put in your own expense account, and," with a wink, "you can go as far as you like. I'm a generous cuss with the company's money when they give me full swing."
Drennen put out his hand; Madden urbanely stripped off one of the bills and handed it to him. It was for fifty dollars. Drennen struck a match, set fire to a corner of the bill and used the lighter to get his pipe going. Madden, upon his feet in pink-faced wrath, was silenced by Drennen's voice booming out angrily:
"So you think you can bait me into your lawyer trap with jingling pennies in a tin cup! Look at that, man; look at that!"
With a sudden gesture he had caught out his canvas bag and had poured the heavy contents upon the bunk beside him. Madden bent forward quickly, and a little gasp came into his throat, a new, more vivid tide of pink into his cheeks as he saw. Drennen shoved fifty dollars in minted gold to one side.
"There's your change," he said crisply. And when Madden's fingers had reluctantly dropped the nuggets back to the quilt, "And as for propositions, I'm the man who's making them. I'm to be left alone to file on my claims and protect myself first. Then, if you're on hand, you can look my property over. I'm going to sell; if you're the first company to take up my offer it might be that I'd sell to you."
"And your proposition?" demanded Madden sharply.