f his arrival he knew all
about the company's business without having proved the necessity of
stirring foot on his own behalf. The claims were not worth much,
according to Old Mizzou. The company had been cheated. They would find
it out some day. None of the ore assayed very high. For his part he did
not see why they even did assessment work. Bennington was to look after
the latter? All in good time. You know you had until the end of the
year to do it. What else was there to do? Nothing much; The present
holders had come into the property on a foreclosed mortgage, and
weren't doing anything to develop it yet. Did Bennington know of their
plans? No? Well, it looked as though the two of them were to have a
pretty easy time of it, didn't it?

Old Mizzou tried, by adroit questioning, to find out just why de Laney
had been sent West. There was, in reality, not enough to keep one man
busy, and surely Old Mizzou considered himself quite competent to
attend to that. Finally, he concluded that it must be to watch
him--Old Mizzou. Acting on that supposition, he tried a new tack.

For two delicious hours he showed up, to his own satisfaction,
Bennington's ignorance of mining. That was an easy enough task.
Bennington did not even know what country-rock was. All he succeeded in
eliciting confirmed him in the impression that de Laney was sent to spy
on him. But why de Laney? Old Mizzou wagged his gray beard. And why spy
on him? What could the company want to know? He gave it up. One thing
alone was clear: this young man's understanding of his duties was very
simple. Bennington imagined he was expected to see certain assessment
work done (whatever that was), and was to find out what he could about
the value of the property.

As a matter of sedulously concealed truth, he was really expected to do
nothing at all. The place had been made for him through Mr. de Laney's
influence, because he wanted to go West.

"Now, my boy," Bishop, the mining capitalist, had said, when
Bennington had visited him in his New York office, "do you know
anything about mining?"

"No, sir," Bennington replied.

"Well, that doesn't matter much. We don't expect to do anything in the
way of development. The case, briefly, is this: We've bought this
busted proposition of the people who were handling it, and have assumed
their debt. They didn't run it right. They had a sort of a wildcat
individual in charge of the thing, and he got contracts for sinking
shaf