The Little Woman had spirit of her own, but she was surprisingly meek with Casey at times.  “It struck me quite suddenly, to-day, that I may know where that gold mine is; or about where it is,” she said, with a hidden excitement in her voice.  “I’ve been thinking all day about it, and putting two and two together.  I merely need a fair description now of Injun Jim, to feel tolerably certain that I do or do not know something about the location of that mine.”

“How’d you come to know anything about it?” Casey stopped to move Babe to his other shoulder.  He had put in a long hard day in the tunnel, and Babe was a husky youngster for four-and-a-half.  Also she had developed a burr-like quality toward Casey, and she liked so well to be carried home from the mine that she would sit flat on the ground and rock her small body and weep until she was picked, up and placed on Casey’s shoulder.  “Set still, now, Babe, or Casey’ll have to put yuh down an’ make yuh walk home.  Le’go my ear!  Yuh want Casey to go around lop-sided, with only one ear?”

“Yes!” assented Babe eagerly, kicking Casey in the stomach.  “Give me your knife, Casey Wyan, so I can cut off one ear an’ make you lop-sided!”

“An’ you’d do it, too!” Casey exclaimed admiringly.

“Baby Girl, you interrupted mother when mother was speaking of something important.  You make mother very sad.”

Babe’s mouth puckered, her eyelids puckered, and she give a small wail.  “Now Baby’s sad!  You hurt—­my—­feelin’s when you speak to me cross!” She shook her yellow curls into her eyes and wept against them.

There was no hope of grown-ups talking about anything so foolish as a gold mine when Babe was in that mood.  So Casey cooked supper, washed the dishes and helped Babe into her pyjamas; then he let her kneel restively in his lap while she said her prayers, and told her a story while he rocked her to sleep—­it was a funny, Caseyish story about a bear, but we haven’t time for it now—­before he attempted to ask the Little Woman again what she meant by her mysterious curiosity concerning Injun Jim.  Then, when he had his pipe going and the stove filled with pinon wood, he turned to her with the question in his eyes.

The Little Woman laughed.  “Now, if that terrible child will kindly consent to sleep for fifteen minutes, I’ll tell you what I meant,” she said.  “It had slipped my mind altogether, and it was only to-day, when Babe was scratching out a snake’s track—­so the snake couldn’t find the way back home, she said—­that I chanced to remember.  Just a small thing, you know, that may or may not mean something very large and important—­like a gold mine, for instance.”

“I don’t have to go to work ’til sunup,” Casey hinted broadly, “and I’ve set up many a night when I wasn’t havin’ half as much fun as I git listenin’ to you talk.”

Again the Little Woman laughed.  I think she had been rambling along just to bait Casey into something like that.”