"I mean that if anybody offers you a million for 'em—you laugh at 'em," exclaimed Reeves, "Because they're worth a whole lot more than that."
Brent stared at the man as though he had taken leave of his senses. "Who has been stringing you?" he asked, "The fact is, those claims are a liability, and not an asset. Camillo Bill took them over to try to get the million I owed him out of 'em—and he couldn't do it. And when Camillo Bill can't get the dust out, it isn't there."
"How do you know he couldn't do it?"
"Because he told me so."
"He lied."
Brent flushed: "I reckon you don't know Camillo Bill," he said gravely, "As I told you, he wouldn't grub-stake me when I needed a grub-stake, and I don't understand that. But, I'd stake my life on it that he never lied about those claims—never tried to beat me out of 'em when I was down and out! Why, man, he won them in a game of stud—and he wouldn't take them!"
"But he lied to you, just the same," insisted Reeves, and Brent saw that the man's eyes were twinkling. "And it was because he is one of the best friends a man ever had that he did lie to you, and that he wouldn't grub-stake you. You said a while ago that I was about the only friend you had left. Let me tell you a little story, and then judge for yourself.
"About a week after you had gone, inquiries began to float around town as to your whereabouts. I didn't pay any attention to them at first, but the inquiries persisted. They searched Dawson, and all the country around for you. When I learned that the inquiries emanated from such men as Camillo Bill, and Old Bettles, and Moosehide Charlie, and a few more of the heaviest men in the camp, I took notice, and quietly sent for Camillo Bill and had a talk with him. It seems that after he had taken his million out of the claims, he went to you for the purpose of turning them back. He had not seen you for some time, and he was—well, it didn't take him but a minute to see what would happen if he turned back the claims and dumped a couple of million dollars worth of property into your hands at that time. So he told you they had petered out. Then he hunted up a bunch of the real sourdoughs who are your friends, and they planned to kidnap you and take you away for a year—keep you under guard in a cabin, a hundred miles from nowhere, and keep you off the liquor, and make you work like
a nigger till you found yourself again. They laid their plot, and when they came to spring it, you had disappeared."
Brent listened, with tight-pressed lips, and as Reeves finished, he asked: