“It is with Bowman. He's always got a better idea. If we was to just find gold laying on the ground, ready to pick up, which we ain't, Bowman would devise a plan to include eighty steps and forty days of work just to bend over and pick it up. I ain't never seen the like of the man. I think he would rather plan about it than to breathe. He just ain't natural.”

“It does sound like a pretty good nuisance,” Jeff agreed.

“And that ain't the worst of it. We take turns riding the ore we dig into town, and he always comes back with less money than I do. ‘Price of gold is down,’ he'll say. Or ‘wasn't the best quality.’ When all the while I know some of it's going direct into his pocket. I bring the money back, fair and square, except maybe for a drink or two in town to help get back up the canyon, and I know he stops at the bank along the way and sticks a portion of the profits there. I know it as well as I know my own name, C. P. Tucker. He's got a woman down there, too, who's getting a share just for laying still a couple times a month. I tell you, it's aggravating as all hell.”

“It does sound like a rotten deal to me,” Jeff said.

“And when I get back from toting the ore down, how much work has he done? How much ore we got ready? None.”

“That was going to be my answer,” Jeff said.

“Sits on his damned hind end, dreaming about that woman or some other one. That's all he does until I get back, and then it's ‘I got us a new plan on going at that gold,’ and the nonsense just pours from him like milk from a bucket. You know what, Power? You ought to come in with us.”

“Well,” Jeff said, “you do make it seem like an attractive bit of work.”

“No. No. No. Think about it. I do believe Elwood would be willing to sell you his quarter interest in the mine. We're making money, but not enough to keep Elwood occupied. If you and I was to own half the mine, we could do things our way, and by and by we could force Bowman out.”

“And how would that work? He owns half of it. We would own half of it. It's a standoff. I don't think much of that plan.”

“But you don't know what I know, which is that Bowman's got a silent partner. We could go around Bowman and buy out the partner, and we'd own three-quarters of the mine, three-quarters of the ore, and three-quarters of the profit, and we would pretty much own Mr. Bowman, too. He'd have to sell us his share because we could just vote him right out of any profits at all.”

“And how much would this cost me?”