Mr. Dill lost the speck and was some time in finding it and, while he searched, the stove pipe separated at the joint, calling attention to the fact that the sufferer upstairs was nervous. Pa Snow's voice came so distinctly down the stove-pipe hole that there was reason to believe he was on his hands and knees.
"Befoah you should do anything definite, we-all should like if you would look ovah 'The Bay Hoss.' It's makin' a fine showin', and 'The Under Dawg' is on the market, too, suh."
In the excitement Uncle Bill sat puffing calmly on his pipe.
Mr. Dill with a gesture brushed aside the waving arms and eager hands: "And haven't you anything to sell?" he asked him curiously. "Don't you mine?"
"Very little," Uncle Bill drawled tranquilly: "I dudes."
"You what?"
"I keeps an 'ad' in the sportin' journals, and guides."
"Oh, yes, hunters--eastern sportsmen--" Mr. Dill nodded. "But I thought I recognized an old-time prospector in you."
"They's no better in the hull West," Yankee Sam declared generously, while Uncle Bill murmured that there was surer money in dudes. "Show Dill that rar' mineral, Uncle Bill." To Dill in an aside: "He's got a mountain of it and it's somethin' good."
Uncle Bill made no move.
"I aims to hold it for the boom."
"And what's your honest opinion of the country, Mr. Griswold?" Dill asked conciliatingly. "What do you think well find when we reach the secondary enrichment?"
A pin dropping would have sounded like a tin wash boiler rolling downstairs in the silence which fell upon the office of the Hinds House. Uncle Bill, looking serenely at the circle of tense faces, continued to smoke while he took his own time to reply.
"I'm a thinkin',"--puff-puff--"that when you sink a hundred feet below the surface,"--puff-puff--"you won't git a damn thing."
Involuntarily Yankee Sam reached for the poker and various eyes sought the wood-box for a sizable stick of wood.
"Upon what do you base your opinion?" asked Mr. Dill, taken somewhat aback. "What makes you think that?"
"Because we're in it now. The weatherin' away of the surface enrichment made the placers we washed out in '61-'64."
Judge George Petty glowered and demanded contemptuously: "Do you know what a mine is?"
"Well," replied Uncle Bill tranquilly, "not allus, but ginerally a mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar."
Yankee Sam half rose from his chair and pointed an accusing poker at Uncle Bill.
"That old pin-head is the worst knocker that ever queered a camp. If we'd a knowed you was comin'," turning to Mr. Dill, "we'd a put him in a tunnel with ten days' rations and walled him up."