The younger man reached the bottom the sooner, and sitting down began to shy pebbles at a bowlder a few yards below, to see how far they would glance.

Bob came lumbering down the slope of loose stones, took a seat pretty near Len, and slowly drawing his knife from his pocket, opened it with great deliberation and began to whittle at a bit of spruce bark.

Nothing was said for some time, and neither took any notice of the other. Each was waiting for his opponent to begin. At last the eager disposition of the young Virginian, who never could bear to waste time in going about whatever he had to do, and who in consequence had often exemplified the maxim “more haste less speed,” overcame his reserve and broke the silence.{142}

“Well, Bob,” he began in a careless manner, “I never expected to see you in as mean a scrape as this.”

If our embassador had studied over it for a week, he could not have made a remark which would better serve his purpose. Bob had long deemed himself a very wily old dog indeed. He had boasted of this to his associates more than once, and had assured them that they would see how, on this occasion, he would “argify and bamboozle that young cub of a Bushwick” until, figuratively speaking, he had tied him all up in a bundle and laid him away on a shelf in safe storage.

But Len’s cool remark, driving straight home to the very heart and spirit of all his pretensions, let the wind out of Old Bob’s behavior and arguments together. It angered him in an instant, and when a diplomat gets angry he loses his power. Instead of the soft words and sly reasoning by which he had hoped to fool his antagonist into opening his doors to the treachery which it was intended{143} should follow; instead of the pretty speeches which Bob had carefully thought out and talked over, came furious retorts, bad language, and threats, to which Len listened with the utmost composure.

The substance of it all was, that Bob and his precious accomplices had jumped the mine, and yet they hadn’t jumped it, rightly speaking, because they had as much right there as anybody. The claim had been abandoned, and if anybody had gone to work at it why that was at their own risk, and they mustn’t complain when another man came along and took it away from the first party.

“Now I’ve got this yere ’Rora mine,” Bob shouted excitedly, “and I’m goin’ to keep it, don’t you forget that! An’ wot’s more, my friend Mr. Stevens is agoin’ to jump that claim you’re holdin’ now, ’n’ that cabin. That cabin belonged to my friend Pickens, ’n’ he told me, before he went away, that if I wanted it I could have it, and I can prove it.”{144}

“Now,” Bob kept on, “you young roosters ’d better give up and crawl out. We’ll give you a chance to get away and take your blankets and things if you’ll quit peaceable-like and git out. We don’t want no trouble, nor nobody hurted.”

“Then why did you put a ball into our doorpost?” interrupted his listener.

“Scotty did that. I told him’t wa’n’t on the squar, an’ ’twas kinder haxidental anyhow. If you’ll quit shootin’ at us we wont shoot at you,—an’ I wouldn’t nohow.”

“We haven’t fired a shot.”

“You’re jist ready to all the time,” Bob persisted, “so’s we gentlemen can’t work our property for fear of you.”

“You ‘gentlemen’! Your ‘property’!” repeated Lennox, with infinite scorn.

“Yes, ours. And, as I was sayin’, we’ll go to town and get help, if we arn’t enough alone, and we’ll bounce you out o’ that cabin which we want for ourselves, and you may thank your stars if you yet out with whole{145} skins. The hull filin’ of ye must pack up and scoot ’fore sundown.”

“That’s rather sudden,” Len pleaded; “can’t you give us till to-morrow morning? It looks like it was going to rain to-night.”

“Well, we don’t want to be rough on young chaps like you, though you’re too cheeky for these parts,” Bob conceded, thinking he had frightened the lad; “and we wont crowd ye to-night. But, by this, that and the other! if you don’t skip out early to-morrow you’ll hear from us, you bet!”

“All right!” Len rejoined. “I’ll tell the boys. I’m glad you gave us till to-morrow to get out, for it looks mighty like a storm to-night.”

It required only a very brief report from Lennox to acquaint the firm with what Bob had threatened, and, no doubt, would try to carry out.

“They have no suspicion,” Len asserted, “that Morris is with us, and it will be a good thing if we can continue to keep it secret.”{146}

“They’ll find it out mighty sudden and pointed-like,” muttered Morris, “if they don’t play cautious.”

There was a pause for ............