mountain, he had a little time to spend on the
streets in town. On his return he brought news; the news we had all
been expecting and waiting for.

"The big trouble's on the way," he reported. "Bennett Avenue's all lit
up with the news that there's been a new strike on Bull Mountain. I
heard about it mighty near everywhere I went. Up to date nobody seems
to know just where it is, or who has made it; but they've got hold of
the main guy, all right. One fellow told me he had it straight from
the sampling works. Some cuss on the inside, I reckon, who doesn't
know enough to keep his blame' mouth shut, has gone and leaked."

"I'd like mighty well to see another eighty thousand in the bank before
we have to shut our eyes and begin handing it out to the lawyers," said
Barrett. "Besides, when we get ready to build a shaft-house and put in
machinery, we'll have to have more ground room. After the news gets
out, we'll just about have to blanket what land we buy with
twenty-dollar gold-pieces."

"With the Lawrenceburg hemming us in the way it does, we won't be able
to buy elbow room at any kind of a price, will we?" asked Gifford, who
had not gone into the topographies as minutely as Barrett and I had.

"There are the three corners of the original triangle which we weren't
able to cover in our claim," Barrett explained. "And down yonder on
that gulch flat that we are using for a wagon road there is a claim
called the 'Mary Mattock' which was taken up and worked and dropped a
year or so ago by a Nebraska syndicate. When I was in town last week I
gave Benedict, of Benedict & Myers, the job of running down the owners,
with the idea that we might possibly wish to buy the ground a little
later on.

"Good work!" Gifford applauded. "I wouldn't have thought of anything
as foxy as that."

"I told Benedict we'd buy the Mary Mattock if we could get it at a
reasonable figure, or lease it if we couldn't buy it," Barrett went on.
"It is probably worthless to its present owners as it stands; its three
shafts are full of water, and I'm told the Nebraskans spent fifty
thousand dollars trying to pump them. But the minute the 'Little
Clean-Up' gets into the newspapers, the Mary Mattock, being next door
to us, will figure in the market as a bonanza, whether it is or isn't."

Gifford cut himself a chew of tobacco from his pocket-plug.

"I wish to gracious we had that other eighty thousand you're honing
for, right now," he protest