Beasley was enjoying the spectacle of the warmth which prompted her defense. She was devilish pretty, he admitted to himself.
"Maybe you feel that way," he said, in a tone that jarred. "Say," he went on shrewdly, "I'm no sucker, I'm not one of these slobs chasin' gold they're eager to hand on to the first guy holdin' out his hand. I'm out to make a pile. I had a claim in the ballot. Maybe it's a good claim. I ain't troubled to see. Why? I'll tell you. Maybe I'd have taken a few thousand dollars out of it. Maybe a heap. Maybe only a little. Not good--with all these slobs around." He shook his head. "I figured I'd git the lot if I traded. I'd get the show of all of the claims. See? The 'strike' ain't goin' to last. It's a pocket in the hill, an' it'll peter out just as dead sure as--well as can be. An' when it's petered out there's going to be jest one feller around here who's made a profit--an' it ain't one of those who used the sluice-boxes. No, you can believe what you like. This 'strike' was jest a devil's laugh at folks who know no better. An' master Buck has handed you something of devil's luck when he made you take that gold."
There was something very keen about this man, and in another Joan might have admired it; but Beasley's mind was tainted with such a vicious meanness that admiration was impossible.
"I don't believe it," said Joan staunchly. "Neither does Buck. He would never willingly hand me the trouble you suggest."
Her words were the result of an impetuous defense of the absent man. To hear this man attack Buck was infuriating. But the moment she had uttered them, the moment she had seen their effect, that meaning laugh which they brought to the storekeeper's lips, she wished they had never been spoken.
"Don't guess Buck needs to scrap fer himself with you around, Miss Golden," he laughed. "Gee! He's in luck. I wonder!"
Joan choked back her swift-rising indignation. The man wasn't worth it, she told herself, and hurriedly prepared to depart. But Beasley had no intention of letting her go like that.
"I wonder whether he is in luck, though," he went on quickly, in a tone he knew the girl would not be able to resist. His estimate was right. She made no further move to go.
"How?" she asked.
"Oh, nuthin' of consequence," he said aggravatingly. "I was just thinking of the way folks are talking." Then he laughed right out; and if Joan had only understood the man she would have known that his merriment was but the precursor of something still more unpleasant.