“Oh, you think you’re not going to throw it, but you are. We’ve just come up to explain that to you.”
“I see. If it is compulsory, why shouldn’t I throw it as far as I can?”
“Because,” explained Jim, politely, “there’s a lot of dynamite stored in the end of that hole, and dynamite isn’t a thing to fool with, you know.”
Stranleigh laughed.
“I rather fancy you’re right, though I know as little about dynamite as I do about mines. But to be sure of being on the right side, I will leave the tossing of the stone to you. Here it is,” whereupon he handed the lump of rock to Jim, who flung it carelessly into the mine again, but did not join in his visitor’s hilarity.
“You seem to regard me as a dangerous person?”
“Oh, not at all, but we do love a man that attends to his own business. We understood that you came here for shooting and fishing.”
“So I did, but other people were out shooting before I got a chance. A man who’s had a bullet through his shoulder neither hunts nor fishes.”
“That’s so,” admitted Jim, with the suavity of one who recognises a reasonable statement, “but now that you are better, what do you come nosing round the mine for? Why don’t you go on with your shooting and your fishing?”
“Because Mr. Armstrong was to be my guide, and he, I regret to say, has not yet returned home. As he is tramping from Chicago to the ranch, no one knows when he will put in an appearance.”