The foreman shrugged and laughed. “Oh, nothing. Of course, I’m not worrying—it isn’t my place to do so. You’re the responsible party here, and you’re too clever a man to leave such things as—as footprints or thumb marks about.”
“You are not insinuating that I might——” began Nash.
“Certainly not!” exclaimed the other, interrupting. “But often a spotter—particularly a woman, is likely to get a line on some things that ought to be—well, kept under cover.”
They had reached camp by this time, and when the foreman finished with his declaration, he laughed again, and turned into a dark side street.
“See you later, Mr. Nash,” he called back.
Nash continued alone up the main street of the camp, pondering over the man’s conversation.
“He knows something—or thinks he does, anyway,” Nash muttered to himself. “If I wasn’t absolutely sure of myself——” He stopped, laughing at his own suspicions. “Nonsense. I’ll see that fellow in the morning, and find out just what he’s aiming at.”
CHAPTER XXI.
MORE COMPLICATIONS.
The day following, however, Nash found so much additional work laid out for him that all other matters, especially those of a personal nature, were relegated to the background.
The “coyote” was exploded at eight o’clock that night, and Nash sought his cabin an hour later, dead tired, but with the satisfaction of knowing the carefully planned drift and rock chamber had accomplished the purpose intended. The double explosion had ripped off the mountaintop in the twinkling of an eye. A hundred men in a hundred days could not have duplicated the performance.