wore, he could hear their brains rattle in their skulls. It
doesn't take brains to shoot straight, and he decided that the lanky
young man was the one who had shot from the rim-rock. They drove him
down into the narrow, deep gulch, following a steep trail that Casey
had not seen the day before. The trail led them to the mouth of a
tunnel; and by the size of the dump Casey judged that the workings were
of a considerable extent. They were getting out silver ore, he
guessed, after a glance or two at stray pieces of rock.

Joe was a big, glum-looking individual with his left hand bandaged. He
chewed tobacco industriously and maintained a complete silence while
Hank, frequently telling Paw to shut up, told how and where they had
found Casey spying up on the butte.

"We don't fancy stray desert rats prowlin' around without no reason,"
said Joe. "Our boss that we're workin' for ain't at home. We're
lookin' for 'im back any day now, an' we'll just hold yuh till he
comes. He can do as he likes about yuh. You'll have to work fer your
board--c'm on an' I'll show yuh how."

Hank followed Casey and Joe into the tunnel. Casey made no objections
whatever to going. The tunnel was a fairly long one, he noticed, with
drifts opening out of it to left and right. At the end of the main
tunnel, Joe turned, took Casey's candle from him and stuck it into a
seam in the wall, as he had done with his own.

"Ever drill in rock?" he asked shortly.

"Mebbe I have an' mebbe I ain't," Casey returned defiantly.

"Here's a drill, an' here's your single-jack. Now git t' work. There
ain't any loafin' around this camp, and spies never meant good to
nobody. Yuh needn't expect to be popular with us--but you'll git your
grub if yuh earn it."

Casey looked at the drill, took the double-headed, four-pound hammer
and hesitated. He has said that it was pretty hard to resist braining
the two of them at once. But there would still be the old man with the
shotgun, and he admitted that he was curious about the old woman who
rocked and rocked. He decided to wait awhile and see, why these miners
found it necessary to shoot harmless prospectors who came near the
butte. So he spat into the dust of the tunnel floor, squinted at Joe
for a minute and went to work.

That day Casey was kept underground except during the short interval of
"shooting" and waiting for the dynamite smoke to clear out of the
tunnel; which process Casey assisted by operating a