ork for their mid-day meal, gathered round the fir. They
waited mildly curious when Saunders rose and made a sign that he
required their attention, which they were perhaps the more willing to
give because they were all his customers, and bills are apt to run up
in a bush ranching community.

"Boys," said Saunders, "I want to point out that instead of owning
gold-mines most of you would now be shoveling on the railroads or
humping fir trees at the sawmills, if it hadn't been for me."

Some of them laughed, and some of them admitted that there was a
certain truth in this, for the bush rancher who buys uncleared land
usually spends several years in very strenuous labor before it
produces enough for him to live on, and in the meanwhile he must
either go away and endeavor to earn a few dollars every now and then
or else fall into the hands of the nearest storekeeper.

"Our friend is a philanthropist," said one of them, who spoke clean,
colloquial English. "We all admit his favors, but he doesn't mention
that he puts them in the bill."

"And he doesn't charge anything extra for insects in his flour," said
another man.

There was a little laughter, but Saunders gazed at them reproachfully.

"If you think it's easy making money out of the kind of crowd you are,
all you have to do is to start a store and see. But that wasn't quite
what I meant to say," he explained. "Anyway, I put the whole of you
right on to this lead."

"You were quite a long while doing it," interjected one of the
audience.

Saunders waved his hand.

"Am I a blame fool?" he asked. "I've no use for an inquisitive,
grasping crowd worrying round my gold-mine until I've got things
securely fixed. Still, you drove off those jumpers, for which you have
my thanks; and I want in due time to get back the money most of you
owe me."

"You can count on that, boys," said another of them. "It's a dead sure
thing."

The storekeeper disregarded this.

"Well," he continued, "we'll get to the point of it. It's kind of easy
finding a gold-mine when you've a friend of my kind to put you on to
it, but it's quite often a blame hard thing to keep it. Now, you'll
have men from the cities wanting to buy you up, offering you a few
hundred dollars for the claims you've struck, and if you're fools
you'll take it. If not, you'll hold off until the Grenfell Consols go
up on the market and then give us first call on buying the lot. If we
can't take the deal you'll get six