Ore City went limp but not too limp to strain their ears for Uncle
Bill's reply.

"Yes," he drawled, "you want to take particular care that I ain't saltin'
you. Give plenty of time to your examination. They's no great sweat; I
wouldn't sign my name to an application for a fish license that you
brought me until I'd had a good lawyer look it over first. As I promised
you when you wrote me to open up that ledge, I'll give you the first
shot at it, but don't try any funny business. I know now what I got,
and I don't need you to help me handle it. I've never made it no secret,
Wilbur, that I wouldn't trust you with a red-hot stove."

"I don't see why you should talk to me like this," Dill declared in an
injured tone. "You can't point to a single thing I've done."

"I ain't got fingers enough," Uncle Bill said dryly, "and my toes is
under cover. It's prob'ly slipped your mind that I was down in south'rn
Oregon when you left between two suns; but tain't that"--his old eyes
gleamed--"it's what you done last winter--goin' down there deliberate to
jump Bruce Burt's claim."

"Ss-sh!" Mr. Dill hissed, not in resentment but in alarm as he glanced
over his shoulder. "That's Burt's father." From the corner of his
mouth--"I think he's got money."

Money! The word acted like a strychnia tablet upon Ore City's retarded
circulation. Money! Warmth returned to its extremities. It looked at the
object of these hopeful suspicions as though its many heads swung on a
single neck. He was sitting by the stove in a suit of clothes that must
have cost as much as fifteen dollars and he appeared as oblivious to
their concentrated gaze as though he were alone in the middle of his
ranch.

The strange female was still unaccounted for. Ore City had the tense,
over-strained feeling of a spectator trying to watch all the acts in a
triple-ringed circus. When she removed her outer wraps it was seen that
she was not only young but, in Ore City's eyes, overpoweringly
good-looking. Was she married? Every question paled beside this one.
Surely--they looked at Uncle Bill contemptuously--even if he _had_
struck something she would not marry that old codger.

When she walked to the stove to warm her hands if they had followed
their impulses they would have jumped and run. The bravest among them
dared not raise his eyes two inches above the bottom part of the
stove-door though in each mind there was a wild groping for some light
and airy nothing to show how