"That's right," Cash conceded.
"Bill Andrews told me," Watty said. "They've just broke through on the other side of that drive I'm in...."
"It would be all right," he went on, "if Paul'd work for Michael like he did for Jun. But is Michael the man to make him? Not by long chalks. Potch is turning out all right, the boys say.... Michael says he works like a chow ... has to make him put in the peg ... but they'll both be havin' Rum-Enough on their hands before long—that's a sure thing."
Watty's, George's, and Cash's mine was one of the best worked and best planned on the fields.
Watty and Cash inspected the streak George was working, and speculated as to what it would yield. George leaned his pick against the wall, eager, too, about the chances of what the thread of fire glittering in the black potch would lead to. But he was proud of the mine as well as the stone it had produced. It represented the first attempt to work a claim systematically on the Ridge. George himself had planned and prospected every inch of it; and before he went above ground for the midday meal, he glanced about it as usual, affirming his pride and satisfaction; but his eyes fell on the broken white stone about his pitch.
"As soon as we get her out, I'll shift that stuff," he said.
When they went up for their meal, Michael did not join Watty, George, and Cash as usual. He spread out his lunch and sat with Paul and Potch in the shade of some wilgas beside his own mine. He knew that Rouminof would not be welcome in George and Watty's shelter, and that Paul and Potch would bring a certain reserve to the discussions of Ridge affairs which took place there.
Potch saw Michael's eyes wander to where George was sitting yarning with his mates. He knew Michael would rather have been over there; and yet Michael seemed pleased to have got his own mine in working order again. He talked over ways of developing it with Paul, asking his opinion, and explaining why he believed the claim was good enough to stick to for a while longer, although very little valuable stone had come out of it. Potch wondered why his eyes rested on Paul with that faint smile of satisfaction.
The Ridge discussed Michael and his new partnership backwards and forth, and back again. Michael knew that, and was as amused as the rest of the Ridge at the company he was keeping. Although he sat with his own mates at midday, he was as often as not with the crowd under Newton's veranda in the evening, discussing and settling the affairs of the Ridge and of the universe. After a while he was more like his old self than he had been for a long time—since Mrs. Rouminof's death—people said, when they saw him going about again with a quiet smile and whimsical twist to his mouth.
The gossips had talked a good deal about Michael and Mrs. Rouminof, but neither she nor he had bothered their heads about the gossips.