"The sons-of-a-gun!" breathed Laughing Bill. "The double-crossing sons-of-a-gun! Why, it begins to look like a big summer for me."
Bill slept well that night, for now that he knew the game which was going on he felt sure that sooner or later he would take a hand in it. Just how or when the hand would fall he could not tell, but that did not worry him in the least, inasmuch as he already held the trumps. It seemed that a kindly fortune had guided him to the Aurora; that fate had decreed he should avenge the wrongs of Ponatah. The handy-man fell asleep with a smile upon his lips.
The first ship arrived that very evening, and the next day Doctor Slayforth in person appeared at the Aurora. He was a thin, restless man with weak and shifting eyes; he said grace at dinner, giving thanks for the scanty rations of hash and brown beans over which his hungry workmen were poised like cormorants. The Aurora had won the name of a bad feeder, but its owner seemed satisfied with his meal. Later Bill overheard him talking with his superintendent.
"I'm disappointed with the clean-ups," Slayforth confessed. "The pay appears to be pinching out."
"She don't wash like she sampled, that's a fact," said Black Jack.
"I'm afraid we shall have to practise economies—"
"Look here! If you aim to cut down the grub, don't try it," counseled
Berg. "It's rotten now."
"Indeed? There appeared to be plenty, and the quality was excellent. I fear you encourage gluttony, and nothing so interferes with work. We must effect a saving somehow; there is too great a variation between theoretical and actual values."
"Huh! You better try feeding hay for a while," sourly grumbled the superintendent. "If you ain't getting what you aimed to get it's because it ain't in the cards."
This conversation interested Bill, for it proved that the robbers had helped themselves with a liberal hand, but how they had managed to appropriate enough gold to noticeably affect the showing of the winter's work intensely mystified him; it led him to believe that Black Jack and Denny were out for a homestake.