at you out of what's left. Dey're nutting but a bunch of t'ieves
and robbers----"

"Aw, that's all right," broke in Denver impatiently, "for cripe's sake,
give me a chance. I haven't bought your mine nor Bunk's mine either, and
it don't do any good to talk. I'm going to rake this country with a
fine-tooth comb for claims that show silver and gold, and when I've seen
'em all I'll buy or I won't, so you might as well let me alone."

"Very vell, sir," began the Professor bristling with offended dignity
and, seeing him prepared with a long-winded explanation, Denver turned
up the hill and quit him. He clambered up to the rim, dripping with
sweat at every step, and all that day, while the heat waves blazed and
shimmered, he prospected the face of the rim-rock. The hot stones burned
his hands, he fought his way through thorns and catclaws and climbed
around yuccas and spiny cactus; but at the end of the long day, when he
dragged back to camp, he had found nothing but barren holes. The country
was pitted with open cuts and shallow prospect-holes, mostly dug to hold
down worthless claims; and the second day and the third only served to
raise his opinion of the claim that Bunker had showed him.

On the fourth day he went back to it and prospected it thoroughly and
then he kept on around the shoulder of the hill and entered the country
to the north. Here the sedimentary rim-rock lay open as a book and as he
followed along its face he found hole after hole pecked into one
copper-stained stratum. It was the same broad stratum of quartzite
which, on coming to the creek, had dipped down into Bunker's claim; and
now Denver knew that others beside himself thought well of that
mineral-bearing vein. For the country was staked out regularly and in
each location monument there was the name Barney B. Murray.

The steady panting of a gas-engine from somewhere in the distance drew
Denver on from point to point and at last, in the bottom of a deep-cleft
canyon, he discovered the source of the sound. Huge dumps of white waste
were spewed out along the hillside, there were houses, a big tent and
criss-crossed trails; but the only sign of life was that _chuh_,
_chuh_, of the engine and the explosive _blap_, _blaps_
of an air compressor. It was Murray's camp, and the engine and the
compressor were driving his diamond drill.

Denver looked about carefully for some sign of the armed guard and then,
not too noisily, he went down the trail and fol