“We’re driving a tunnel.”
“I got eyes, young fellow. What for?”
“Mr. Merrick didn’t tell me what he wanted it for. He told me to get busy. Mine not to reason why, Mr. Prowers.”
“Smart, ain’t you, by jiminy by jinks?”
A foreman came up and propounded a difficulty to Hollister. That young man walked briskly away to look the matter over and did not return. The two riders hung around for a time, then disappeared over the brow of a hill.
“The old man’s got something to think about,” the foreman said to Hollister, chuckling.
“Yes, and his thinking will bring him straight to one conclusion; that we’re not going to run through Black’s homestead claim. When he figures out where we are going, he’ll start something.”
“I don’t quite see what he can do.”
“Nor I, but we didn’t foresee what he would do last time. He killed poor Coyle, and he didn’t leave enough evidence to prove in a law court that he did it.”
“He’d ought to be behind the bars right now—him an’ that Black too,” the foreman said bitterly.