referred to board himself, and having
named the amount, Casey waited two minutes, as if he were meditating upon
the matter, and then replied that it suited him all right.

Casey did not think much of her claims, though he did not tell her so. In
his opinion that tunnel should have been driven into the hill at a
different point, where the indications of mineral were much stronger and
the distance to the contact much less. A light, varying vein had been
followed at an incline, and Casey, working alone, was obliged to wheel
every pound of dirt up a rather steep grade to the dump outside. The rock
was hard to work in, so that it took him a full half a day to put in four
shots, and then he would be likely to find that they had "bootlegged." The
tunnel also faced the south, from where the wind nearly always blew, so
that the gas and smoke from his shots would hang in there sometimes for a
full twenty-four hours, making it impossible for him to work.

The little woman seemed slightly surprised when Casey told her, at the end
of the first week, to knock off three days on account of gas. She and the
little girl came to his camp next day and brought Casey a loaf of light
bread and interrupted him in the act of shaving. The little woman looked
at the two burros and at the mule, measured the camp outfit with her keen
gray eyes, looked at Casey who had nicked his chin, and became thoughtful.

After that she stopped calling him Mr. Ryan and addressed him as Casey
Ryan instead, with a little teasing inflection in her voice. Once Casey
happened to mention Lund, and when he saw her look of surprise he
explained that he drove a stage out of Lund, for awhile.

"Oh! So you _are_ that Casey Ryan!" she said. "I might have known it." She
laughed to herself, but she did not say why, and Casey was afraid to ask.
He could remember so many incidents in his past that he would not want the
little woman to know about, and he was afraid that it might be one of them
at which she was laughing.

She formed the habit of coming up to the tunnel every day, with Babe
chattering along beside her, swinging herself on her mother's hand. At
first she said whimsically that she had found it best to keep an eye on
her miners, as if that explained her coming. But she always had something
good to eat or drink. Once she brought a small bucket of hot chocolate,
which Casey gulped down heroically and smacked his lips afterwards. Casey
hated chocolate, too, so I thin