“My, but it’s grand luck having him here—hey, boys?” said Ferguson.
“It’s the biggest thing of the century,” said Ham Sandwich. “It ’ll go all over the world; you mark my words.”
“You bet!” said Jake Parker, the blacksmith. “It ’ll boom this camp. Ain’t it so, Wells-Fargo?”
“Well, as you want my opinion—if it’s any sign of how I think about it, I can tell you this: yesterday I was holding the Straight Flush claim at two dollars a foot; I’d like to see the man that can get it at sixteen today.”
“Right you are, Wells-Fargo! It’s the grandest luck a new camp ever struck. Say, did you see him collar them little rags and dirt and things? What an eye! He just can’t overlook a clue—’tain’t in him.”
“That’s so. And they wouldn’t mean a thing to anybody else; but to him, why, they’re just a book—large print at that.”
“Sure’s you’re born! Them odds and ends have got their little old secret, and they think there ain’t anybody can pull it; but, land! when he sets his grip there they’ve got to squeal, and don’t you forget it.”
“Boys, I ain’t sorry, now, that he wasn’t here to roust out the child; this is a bigger thing, by a long sight. Yes, sir, and more tangled up and scientific and intellectual.”
“I reckon we’re all of us glad it’s turned out this way. Glad? ‘George! it ain’t any name for it. Dontchuknow, Archy could ’ve learnt something if he’d had the nous to stand by and take notice of how that man works the system. But no; he went poking up into the chaparral and just missed the whole thing.”
“It’s true as gospel; I seen it myself. Well, Archy’s young. He’ll know better one of these days.”