FullReads

The immediate cause of this commotion felt the necessity of an explanation.

“It would have been just as easy for you to have stayed outside with your business leg, instead of dragging it into private life in that obtrusive way,” retorted the Right Bower; “but that exhaustive effort is n’t going to fill the pork barrel. The grocery man at Dalton says–what’s that he said?” he appealed lazily to the Judge.

“Said he reckoned the Lone Star was about played out, and he didn’t want any more in his–thank you!” repeated the Judge with a mechanical effort of memory utterly devoid of personal or present interest.

“I always suspected that man, after Grimshaw begun to deal with him,” said the Left Bower. “They’re just mean enough to join hands against us.” It was a fixed belief of the Lone Star partners that they were pursued by personal enmities.

“More than likely those new strangers over in the Fork have been paying cash and filled him up with conceit,” said Union Mills, trying to dry his leg by alternately beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall. “Once begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag everybody down with you.”

This vague conclusion was received with dead silence. Everybody had become interested in the speaker’s peculiar method of drying his leg, to the exclusion of the previous topic. A few offered criticism, no one assistance.

“Who did the grocery man say that to?” asked the Right Bower, finally returning to the question.

“The Old Man,” answered the Judge.

“Of course,” ejaculated the Right Bower sarcastically.

“Of course,” echoed the other partners together. “That’s like him. The Old Man all over!”

It did not appear exactly what was like the Old Man, or why it was like him, but generally that he alone was responsible for the grocery man’s defection. It was put more concisely by Union Mills.

“That comes of letting him go there! It’s just a fair provocation to any man to have the Old Man sent to him. They can’t, sorter, restrain themselves at him. He’s enough to spoil the credit of the Rothschilds.”

“That’s so,” chimed in the Judge. “And look at his prospecting. Why, he was out two nights last week, all night, prospecting in the moonlight for blind leads, just out of sheer foolishness.”

“It was quite enough for me,” broke in the Left Bower, “when the other day, you remember when, he proposed to us white men to settle down to plain ground sluicing, making ‘grub’ wages just like any Chinaman. It just showed his idea of the Lone Star claim.”

“Well, I never said it afore,” added Union Mills, “but when that one of the Mattison boys came over here to examine the claim with an eye to purchasin’, it was the Old Man that took the conceit out of him. He just as good as admitted that a lot of work had got to be done afore any pay ore could be realized. Never even asked him over to the shanty here to jine us in a friendly game; just kept him, so to speak, to himself. And naturally the Mattisons didn’t see it.”

A silence followed, broken only by the rain monotonously falling on the roof, and occasionally through the broad adobe chimney, where it provoked a retaliating hiss and splutter from the dying embers of the hearth. The Right Bower, with a sudden access of energy, drew the empty barrel before him, and taking a pack of well-worn cards from his pocket, began to make a “solitaire” upon the lid. The others gazed at him with languid interest.

“Makin’ it for anythin’?” asked Mills.

The Right Bower nodded.

The Judge and Left Bower, who were partly lying in their respective bunks, sat up to get a better view of the game. Union Mills slowly disengaged himself from the wall and leaned over the “solitaire” player. The Right Bower turned the last card in a pause of almost thrilling suspense, and clapped it down on the lid with fateful emphasis.