are a light-minded and frivolous old man," said Stan. "What are we
going to do about our mine?"

"I've done told you. We--per you--are due to wash up the dishes. Do the
next thing next. That's a pretty good rule. Meantime I will superintend
and smoke and reflect."

"Do your reflecting out loud, can't you?" said Stan. His smooth forehead
wrinkled and a sudden cleft appeared between his eyebrows, witness of an
unaccustomed intentness of thought. "Say, Pete; this partnership of ours
isn't on the level. You put in half the work and all the brains."

"'Sall right," said Pete Johnson. "You furnish the luck and
personal pulchritude. That ain't all, either. I'm pickin' up some
considerable education from you, learning how to pronounce words
like that--pulchritude. I mispronounced dreadful, I reckon."

"I can tell you how to not mispronounce half as many words as you do
now," said Stan.

"How's that?" said Pete, greatly interested.

"Only talk half so much."

"Fair enough, kid! It would work, too. That ain't all, either. If I
talked less you'd talk more; and, talking more, you'd study out for
yourself a lot of the things I tell you now, gettin' credit from you for
much wisdom, just because I hold the floor. Go to it, boy! Tell us how
the affairs of We, Us & Company size up to you at this juncture."

"Here goes," said Stan. "First, we don't want to let on that we've got
anything at all on our minds--much less a rich mine. After a reasonable
time we should make some casual mention of discontent that we've sent off
rock to an assayer and not heard from it. Not to say a word would make
our conspirators more suspicious; a careless mention of it might make
them think our find wasn't such-a-much, after all. Say! I suppose it
wouldn't do to pick up a collection of samples from the best mines round
Cobre--and inquire round who to write to for some more, from Jerome
and Cananea, maybe; and then, after talking them up a while, we could
send one of these samples off to be assayed, just for curiosity--what?"

"Bear looking into," said Pete; "though I think they'd size it up as an
attempt to throw 'em off the trail. Maybe we can smooth that idea out so
we can do something with it. Proceed."

"Then we'll have to play up to that location you filed by hiking to the
Gavilan and going through the motions of doing assessment work on that
dinky little claim."

Feeling his way, Stan watched the older man's eyes. Pete nodded approval.