s, manipulators pure and
simple. But I might have let it go at that, seeing it was their game
and not one that I or anybody I cared about would get fleeced at. I
didn't approve of it, you understand. It was their game.

But they capped the climax with what I must cold-bloodedly characterize
as the baldest attempt at a dirty fraud I ever encountered. And they
had the gall to try and make me a party to it. To make this clear you
must understand that I, on behalf of the company and acting as the
company's agent, grubstaked Whitey Lewis and four others to go in and
stake those claims. I was empowered to arrange with these five men
that if the claims made a decent showing each should receive five
thousand dollars in stock for assigning their claims to the company,
and should have employment at top wages while the claims were operated.

They surely earned it. You know what the North is in the dead of
winter. They bucked their way through a hell of frost and snow and
staked the claims. If ever men were entitled to what was due them,
they were. And not one of them stuttered over his bargain, even though
they were taking out weekly as much gold as they were to get for their
full share. They'd given their word, and they were white men. They
took me for a white man also. They took my word that they would get
what was coming to them, and gave me in the company's name clear title
to every claim. I put those titles on record in Hazleton, and came
home.

Lorimer and Brooks deliberately proposed to withhold that stock, to
defraud these men, to steal--oh, I can't find words strong enough.
They wanted to let the matter stand; wanted me to let it be adjusted
later; anything to serve as an excuse for delay. Brooks said to me,
with a grin; "The property's in the company's name--let the roughnecks
sweat a while. They've got no come-back, anyhow."

That was when I smashed him. Do you blame me? I'd taken over those
fellows' claims in good faith. Could I go back there and face those
men and say: "Boys, the company's got your claims, and they won't pay
for them." Do you think for a minute I'd let a bunch of lily-fingered
crooks put anything like that over on simple, square-dealing fellows
who were too honest to protect their own interests from sharp practice?
A quartet of soft-bodied mongrels who sat in upholstered office chairs
while these others wallowed through six feet of snow for three weeks,
living on bacon and bean