“And how much of it can you rake up, after prospectin’ this country for nigh on to thutty years?” was Steve’s answer, glowering at his enemy.
“Wal, dern your hide! there was a time when I might ha’ done my share of it without weepin’ none,” muttered Andy. “And if it hadn’t been for you——”
“Is that so?” cried the other old man, his face ablaze with wrath. “And how about me bein’ right in sight once’t of the most promisin’ lead that ever was uncovered in Canyon County?”
“If it hadn’t been for you,” rejoined Andy, “I would ha’ been rollin’ in wealth. And you know it—dad burn your hide!”
“Look here,” interjected Joe Hurley, interested rather than amused. “If you both tell the truth, you must have together struck a rich streak. Why didn’t you develop it? You were partners, weren’t you?”
“Me, pardners with that yere!” croaked Steve.
“D’ye think for one moment,” demanded Andy, “that I’d help make that feller’s fortune? Not on your tintype!”
Here Judson, with enormous disgust, broke into the discussion. “Dad burn it!” he exclaimed, “this ain’t helpin’ none to build the parson a church.”
The others were laughing uproariously. Steve and Andy glared at each other like two angry dogs with a strong fence between them. But slowly their fierce expressions changed. Hunt, who was watching them with something more than idle curiosity, saw that both old men began to look slyly at each other as they calmed down. The others paid no further attention to Steve and Andy, the flurry of their verbal battle being over. But in the rheumy eyes of Andy there grew a light which seemed to register some secret amusement, while Steve’s toothless grin displayed a humorous appreciation of a phase of the argument that the bystanders in general quite failed to catch.
“Now,” thought the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt, “I wonder, to use one of Joe’s favorite expressions, what those two old fellows have up their sleeves. Perhaps the joke is on Canyon Pass, rather than on these two queer old prospectors. I wonder!”