Lafond climbed the gulch and the knoll, after activity had been well under way for about a week. He found Billy paying the freight-bills on several loads of heavy red-painted machinery, while the teamsters spat and swore just outside the little shack, which he now used as an office. Billy was signing slips from his new check book. Until he should have finished, Lafond strolled about examining the grounds.
Around the mouths of the shafts themselves the débris had accumulated astoundingly, showing that the contractors too had been industrious, but Lafond paid little attention to them. He was more interested in the clearing, levelling, trimming and digging which seemed to indicate the undertaking of rather extensive works above ground. Perhaps a dozen men were at work. Some were engaged in "trueing" the four great foundation beams of what was evidently to be a large building. Others squared smaller timbers near at hand. The remainder were measuring and indicating with a shovel the outlines of other and less pretentious structures. In a moment Billy came out ready to dissertate at length.
"That thar is the boardin' house," he explained, "I thought at first I'd only make her big enough for thirty, 'cause that's as big a gang as I starts with; but then I figgers it out, an' it won't be long before I takes on more, so I thinks it jest as well to start where I ends. So she's goin' to accommodate sixty, two-story, you know. Then yere's the cookee's shack. I aims to have th' kitchen separate yere—don't like that Prairie Dog game nohow." (The "Prairie Dog" was the hotel; and the "game" was the inclusion of the kitchen and the dining-room in the same apartment.) "Then yere's to be the office. I uses my old shack for an office now. I aims to have three sleepin'-rooms, an' a dinin'-room and kitchen."
"What for?" asked Lafond, a little puzzled.
"For me."
"For——?"
"I don't aim to eat with the men. And over yander 'll be th' stables; and thar th' blacksmith's shop; and then the powder house is on th' other side of the gulch. The chicken house is beyond th' blacksmith's shop."
"The what?" asked Mike.
"The chicken house."
"Oh," said Mike.