His partner did not reply to the inconsistency of this argument, but stood looking at the landmark as if dreaming of all it represented.
“That is it, undoubtedly,” he said, as if to himself. “The Croix d’Or. I suppose that’s why the old Frenchman who located the mine in the first place gave it that name––the Cross of Gold!”
“Humph! It looks to me, from what I’ve heard of it,” growled the older prospector, “that 25 the Double Cross would have been a heap more fittin’ name for it. It’s busted everybody that ever had it.”
The younger man laughed softly and remonstrated: “Now, what’s the use in saying that? It wasn’t the Croix d’Or that broke my father–––”
“But his half in it was all he had left when he died!”
“That is true, and it is true that he sunk more than a hundred thousand in it; but it was the stock-market that got him. Besides, how about Sloan, my father’s old-time partner? He’s not broke, by a long shot!”
“No,” came the grumbling response, “he’s not busted, just because he had sense enough to lay his hand down when he’d gone the limit.”
“Lay his hand down? Say, Bill, you’re a little twisted, aren’t you? Better go back over the last month or two and think it over. We, being partners, are working up in the Cœur d’Alenes. Our prospect pinches out. We’ve got just seven hundred left between us on the day we bring the drills and hammers back, throw them in the corner of the cabin, and say ‘We’re on a dead one. What next?’ Then we get the letter saying that my father, whom I haven’t 26 seen in ten years, nor heard much of, owing to certain things, is dead, and that all he left was his half of the Croix d’Or. The letter comes from whom? Sloan! And it says that although he and my father, owing to father’s abominable temper, had not been intimate for a year or two, he still respected his memory, and wanted to befriend his son. Didn’t he? Then he said that he had enough belief left in the Croix d’Or to back it for a hundred thousand more, if I, being a practical miner, thought well of it. Do you call that laying down a hand? Humph!”
The elder man finished rolling a cigarette, and then looked at him with twinkling, whimsical eyes, as if continuing the argument merely for the sake of debate.
“Well, if he thinks it’s such a good thing, why didn’t he offer to buy you out? Why didn’t they work her sooner? She’s been idle, and water-soaked, for three years, ain’t she? As sure as your name’s Dick Townsend, and mine’s Bill Mathews, that old feller back East don’t think you’re goin’ to say it’s all right. He knows all about you! He knows you don’t stand for no lies or crooked work, and are a fool for principle, like a bee that goes and sticks his stinger 27 into somethin’ even though he knows he’s goin’ to kill himself by doin’ it.”