That was five hours before. At the very edge of the black, concealing
chaparral, within easy rifle range of the "Independence" shaft-house,
Hicks and Brown lay flat on their faces, waiting and watching for some
occasion to take a hand. Back behind the little cabin old Mike sat
calmly smoking his black dudheen, apparently utterly oblivious to all
the world save the bound and cursing Swede he was vigilantly guarding,
and whose spirits he occasionally refreshed with some choice bit of
Hibernian philosophy. Beneath the flaring gleam of numerous gasoline
torches, half a dozen men constantly passed and repassed between
shaft-house and dump heap, casting weird shadows along the rough
planking, and occasionally calling to each other, their gruff voices
clear in the still night. Every now and then those two silent watchers
could hear the dismal clank of the windlass chain, and a rattle of ore
on the dump, when the huge buckets were hoisted to the surface and
emptied of their spoil. Once--it must have been after three
o'clock--other men seemed suddenly to mingle among those perspiring
surface workers and the unmistakable neigh of a horse came faintly from
out the blackness of a distant thicket.
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