Bonny strolled away collecting fire-wood. Presently he called back, pointing dramatically with his small-toed boot. “Who's been coyotin' round here?” The hard ground was freshly disturbed in spots as by the paws of some small inquisitive animal. There was no answer.
“What you say? Whose surface diggin's is these? I never know anybody do some mining here.”
“That was me”—Bonny backed a little nearer to catch the old man's words. “I was looking round here for something I lost.”
“What luck you have? You fin' him?”
“Well, now, doos it reely matter to you, sonny?”
“Pardner, it don' matter to me a d—n, if you say so! I was jus' askin' myself what a man would look for if he los' it here. Since I strike this 'ell of a place the very groun' been chewed up and spit out reg'lar, one hundred times a year. 'T'is a gris' mill!”
“I didn't gretly expect to find what I was lookin' for. I was just foolin' around to satisfy myself.”
“That satisfy me!” said Bonny pleasantly; and yet he was a trifle discomfited. He strolled away again and began to sing with a boyish show of indifference to having been called “sonny.”
“Oh, Sally is the gal for me! Oh, Sally's the gal for me! On moonlight night when the star is bright—Oh”—
“Halloa! This some more your work, oncle? You ain' got no chicken wing for arm if you lif' this.—Ah, be dam! I see what you lif' him with. All same stove-lid.” Talking and swearing to himself cheerfully, Bonny applied the end of a broken whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old hearthstone which marked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a step-dance on it and found it hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon the stone where some prying tool had taken hold and slipped, showed he was not the first who had been curious.