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It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's bunk he could find no pay whatever. Slevin had left his hip boots in the cabin, and as Laughing Bill turned down their tops and set them out in the wind to dry his sharp eye detected several yellow pin-points of color which proved, upon closer investigation, to be specks of gold clinging to the wet lining. "Well, I be danged!" said Mr. Hyde.
That such was indeed the case and that Slevin was not the only thief Bill soon discovered, for after the next clean-up he slipped away through the twilight and took stand among the alders outside the rear window of the shack on the hill. From his point of concealment he could observe all that went on inside. It was a familiar scene.
"That's odd, then, bekaise it was only Sunday three weeks, that Murty Slevin, their cousin, if you remember, made you acknowledge that they paid you, at the chapel green." "Ay, an' I do acknowledge; bekaise, Harry, one may as well spake charitably of the absent as not; it's only in private to you that I'm lettin' out the truth."
Father Philemy nodded for the assistance, and continued "but as for human nature, Captain, give it to me at a good rousing christening; or what is better again, at a jovial wedding between two of my own parishioners say this pretty fair-haired daughter of Phaddhy Shemus Phaddhy's here, and long Ned Slevin, Parrah More's son there eh Phaddhy, will it be a match? what do you say, Parrah More?
There was a rush thither, and thence on up the trail Slevin had left, to the scene of the twilight duel, to Black Jack Berg and the cache in the slide. The story told itself down to the last detail; it was the story of a thieves' quarrel and a double killing.
Owing to the fact that he carried his gun beneath his left armpit he was the first to fire, by the fraction of a second. It was impossible to miss at this distance. Berg went to his knees as if hit by a sledge. But he fired from that position, and his shot caught Slevin as the latter crow-hopped nimbly. Both men were down now.
Look at Denny Slevin, for instance! I heard him say he had a hunch something unpleasant was going to happen to him, and it did. We'll go fifty-fifty on this Eclipse Creek." The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Suit yourself. Fresh air won't hurt you." The first frosts of autumn had arrived before Laughing Bill returned to town with the announcement that he had struck a prospect.
"Why not?" queried Slevin. "I told his nibs I was sick of the grub." "Foremen don't quit good jobs on account of the grub. You've got to stick till fall; then we'll both go. We'll strike the old man for a raise " "Humph! He'll let us go, quick enough, when we do that. Let's strike him now. I'm through." "Nothing stirring," Berg firmly declared. "We'll play out the string. I'm taking no chances."
The residue, left in the heel of the blower after each blowing process, was commercial "dust," ready for the bank or the assay office. Doctor Slayforth, with his glasses on the end of his nose, presided at the gold scales, while Denny Slevin looked on. As the dust was weighed, a few ounces at a time, it was dumped into a moose-skin sack and entered upon the books.
Relieved of some fifteen pounds of dead, awkward weight and nothing is more awkward to carry than a sizable gold sack Berg made better speed, arriving at the cache in time to see Slevin spit on his hands and fall to digging. "Every time we open her up I get a shiver," Denny confessed, with a laugh. "I'm scared to look." "Humph! Think she's going to get up and walk out on us?"
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