The man laughed again; he had an easy, gurgling laugh, and his manner was calculated to make him friends.
“Which is saying that there ain’t any blood in this turnip. Mebby so. Time will tell the tale. But I’ll say to ye now that I’ve got a new process which will git all the gold there is, anyway; by that I mean all the gold.”
He leaned back against the wall, with a glance now and then at his frying pan.
“I’ve been lookin’ at that hole in the ground back there since I bought it, and with my new processes I can skin gold out of it in a way to make your eyes bulge out. You’ll see.”
He sat down to his breakfast at last. It was a simple meal, suggesting that the stranger did not expect to live in luxury; but he invited them to share it with him.
“No, we’ll be goin’,” they told him.
“Come up and see me often,” he said to them, and smiled at their backs as he watched them walk away.
Not until they were halfway to the foot of the hill did any of them remember that they had not learned the stranger’s name.
Persimmon Pete came back for this desired information, poking his bushy beard again through the narrow door.