rrett introduced me briefly as Jim Bertrand, late of the Colorado
Midland construction force. Blackwell nodded and looked toward the shack.

"Any more of you?" he asked.

"One more; a fellow named Gifford. He's asleep just now."

Blackwell straightened up.

"It's all right, as I say, Bob. If you three tenderfoots want to come up
here and play at digging a hole, it's no skin off of us. When you get
tired we'll buy the lumber in your shack and what dynamite you happen to
have left, just to save your hauling it away."

"Thanks," said Barrett; "we'll remember that. We haven't much money now,
but we'll probably have more--or less--when we quit."

"Less it is," chuckled the square-shouldered boss of the Lawrenceburg.
"Go to it and work off your little mining fever. But if you should
happen to find anything--which you won't, up here--just remember that
I've given you legal notice, with your partner here as a witness, that
you're on Lawrenceburg ground."

Barrett's grin was a good match for Blackwell's chuckle.

"We're going to sink fifty feet; that's about as far as our present
capital will carry us. As to the ownership of the ground, we needn't
quarrel about that at this stage of the game. You've given us notice;
and you've also given us permission to amuse ourselves if we want to.
We'll call it a stand-off."

After the superintendent had gone I ventured to point out to my
drill-mate that the matter of ownership had been left rather indefinite,
after all.

"Diplomacy, Jimmie," was the quick reply. "The one thing we can't stand
for is to be tied up in litigation before we have contrived to dig a few
of the sinews of war out of this hole. Blackwell's little pop-call warns
us to use about a thousand times as much care and caution as we have been
using. I saw him scraping the dump around with his foot as he talked.
He is one of the shrewdest miners in Colorado, and if he had got his
sleepy eye on a piece of the vein matter as big as a marble, it would
have been all over but the shouting. You can see where all this is
pointing?"

"It means that we've got to make this hole look like a barren hole, and
keep it looking that way--if we have to handle every piece of rock that
comes out of it in our fingers," I said.

"Just that," Barrett asserted, and then we went on with the drilling.

We arranged our routine that evening over a supper of Gifford's
preparing. We planned to take out each day as much ore as t