“Well, there was two ol’ soaks that got around him to grubstake ’em.  They worked it all one year.  They’d git a burro load of grub and go out somewheres and peck around till it was all et up, and then they’d come back an’ tell Frenchy some wild tale about runnin’ acrost what looked like the richest prospect in the country.  They’d go on about havin’ all the indications of a big body uh rich ore.  He’d soak it in, an’ they’d hang around town—­one had a sore foot one time, I remember, that lasted ’em a month of good board at Frenchy’s hotel before he drove ’em out agin to his mine, as he called it.

“They worked that scheme on him for a long time—­and it was the only da—­ scheme they wasn’t too lazy to work.  They’d git money to buy powder an’ fuse an’ caps, ma’am, an’ blow it on booze, y’see.  An’ they’d hang in town, boardin’ off Frenchy, jest as long as they c’ld think of an excuse fer stayin’.

“So somebody tipped Frenchy off that he was bein’ worked for grub an’ booze money, an’ Frenchy done a lot uh thinkin’.  Next time them two come in, he was mighty nice to ’em.  An’ when he finally got ’em pried loose an’ headed out, he appeared suddenly and says he’s goin along to take a look at his mine.  They couldn’t do nothin’ but take him, uh course.  So they led him out to an old location hole somebody else had dug, an’ they showed him iron cappin’ an’ granite contact an’ so on—­just talkin’ wild, an’ every few minutes comin’ in with the ’strong indications of a rich ore body.’  That was their trump suit, y’see, ma’am.

“Frenchy listened, an’ his eyes commenced to snap, but he never said nothin’ for awhile.  Then all at once he pulled one uh these ol’-style revolvers an’ points it at ’em, an’ yells:  ’Indicaziones!  Indicaziones! T’ell weez your indicaziones! Now you show me zee me-tall!’” Casey stopped, reached for his plug and remembered that he mustn’t.  The Little Woman laughed.  She didn’t seem to need the tapering off of the story, as most women demand.

“And so you think I have plenty of indicaziones, but mighty little chance of getting the me-tall,” she pointed the moral.  “Well, then tell me what to do.”

It was in the telling, I think, that Casey for the first time forgot to be shy and became his real, Casey Ryan best.  The Little Woman saw at once, when he pointed it out to her, that she ought to drift and cut under the iron capping instead of tunnelling away from it as they had been doing.

But she was not altogether engrossed in that tunnel.  I think her prospecting into the soul of Casey Ryan interested her much more; and being a woman she followed the small outcropping of his Irish humor and opened up a distinct vein of it before the evening was over.  Just to convince you, she led him on until Casey told her all about feeding his Ford syrup instead of oil, and all about how it ran over him a few times on the dry lake,—­Casey was secretly made happy because she saw at once how easily that could happen, and never once doubted that he was sober!  He told her about the goats in Patmos and made her laugh so hard that Babe woke and whimpered a little, and insisted that Casey take her up and rock her again in the old homemade chair with crooked juniper branches hewn for rockers.