"Don't ye be looking for them that way on duty. Keep your vision for two-legged crawlers. There was a fellow here, just now, who, if faces are incriminating testimony, stands twenty times convicted in the dark, or I'm a duffer in face-palmistry."
"Why not begin with the rope's end, Sergeant?"
"No, no, man! We must even make haste slowly, as some old Roman of an Irishman remarked. I'll just wander on, as if looking for a job, and if any one inquires about me, give me what character ye please!"
"Faith, sorr, since fair play demands reciprocity on both sides, I'll damn ye for a blockhead!"
"Go ahead," laughed Scarlett. Breaking off, he inquired: "Now who's this chee-charka coming up the trail?"
III
LUCKY DURANT
The lagging pace of the young man who was approaching, his weary stoop under a light pack he carried, miner-wise, upon his shoulders, confessed him all too surely the tenderfoot Scarlett had described him.
With a bewildered stare at the congeries of squalid tents and cabins that comprised the camp, he accosted Barney.