The girl shook herself from a reverie. "If you want me to believe you, come every afternoon to the Rock, and wait. Some day I will meet you there."
She was gone.
CHAPTER XII
OLD MIZZOU RESIGNS
Bennington went faithfully to the Rock for four days. During whole afternoons he sat there looking out over the Bad Lands. At sunset he returned to camp. Aliris: A Romance of all Time gathered dust. Letters home remained unwritten. Prospecting was left to the capable hands of Old Mizzou until, much to Bennington's surprise, that individual resigned his position.
The samples lay in neatly tied coffee sacks just outside the door. The tabulations and statistics only needed copying to prepare them for the capitalist's eye. The information necessary to the understanding of them reposed in a grimy notebook, requiring merely throwing into shape as a letter to make them valuable to the Eastern owner of the property. Anybody could do that.
Old Mizzou explained these things to Bennington.
"You-all does this jes's well's I," he said. "You expresses them samples East, so as they kin assay 'em; an' you sends them notes and statistics. Then all they is to do is to pay th' rest of the boys when th' money rolls in. That ain't none of my funeral."