"When I first went down to work for him I advised steam but he goes ahead, and look what's happened--broke down and you can gamble he won't start up again." Lannigan added confidently as though he spoke from personal knowledge--"Them stockholders is done puttin' up money."
"I warned him about the grade he was givin' them sluice-boxes--I went to him first off, didn't I?" Yankee Sam looked around for confirmation. "Do you mind I said at the time he wasn't warshin' that dirt fast enough?"
"Anyhow," declared the Judge querulously, "he ought to 'a piped it off. T'were a hydraulickin' proposition. He could handle it just twice as fast at half the cost. I sent him down word when I heard what he was doin'."
"And wastin' money like he did on all them new style riffles--expanded metal and cocoa matting! Gimme pole riffles with a little strap-iron on the top and if you can't ketch it with that you can't ketch it with nothin'."
"Mostly," said Ma Snow who had come up behind the critic's chair unnoticed, "you've ketched nothin'." She went on in her plaintive voice: "It's a shame, that's what it is, that Bruce Burt didn't just turn over his business to you-all this summer. With shining examples of success to advise him, like's sittin' here burnin' up my wood t'hout offerin' to split any, he couldn't have failed. Personally, I wouldn't think of makin' a business move without first talkin' it over with the financiers that have made Ore City the money centre that it is!"
"Everybody can learn something," Yankee Sam retorted with a show of spirit.
"Not everybody," Ma Snow's voice had an ominous quaver, "or you'd a learned long ago that you can't knock that young man in my hearin'. I haven't forgot if you have, that the only real money that's been in the camp all Summer has come up from the river."
"We wasn't sayin' anything against him personal," the brash Samuel assured her hastily; but Bruce's champion refused to be mollified.
"What if he did shut down? What of it?" She glared defiance until her pale eyes watered with the strain. "I don't notice anybody here that's ever had gumption enough even to start up. What do you do?" She answered for them--"Jest scratch a hole in the ground, then set and wait for Capital to come and hand you out a million. I dast you to answer!"
It was plain from the silence that no one cared to remove the chip on Ma Snow's shoulder.
"I hear he aims to stay down there all winter alone and trap." Judge Petty made the observation for the sake of conversation merely, as the fact was as well known as that there were four feet of snow outside or that the camp was "busted."