“Gentlemen,” he said, with a certain deliberation of utterance, as if he enjoyed his own coarse directness, “I reckon you all have a sort of general idea what you were picked up for, or you wouldn’t be here.  But you may or may not know that for the present you are honest, hard-working miners,—­the backbone of the State of Californy,—­and that you have formed yourselves into a company called the ‘Blue Jay,’ and you’ve settled yourselves on the Bar below Heavy Tree Hill, on a deserted claim of the Marshall Brothers, not half a mile from where the big strike was made five years ago.  That’s what you are, gentlemen; that’s what you’ll continue to be until the job’s finished; and,” he added, with a sudden dominance that they all felt, “the man who forgets it will have to reckon with me.  Now,” he continued, resuming his former ironical manner, “now, what are the cold facts of the case?  The Marshalls worked this claim ever since ’49, and never got anything out of it; then they dropped off or died out, leaving only one brother, Tom Marshall, to work what was left of it.  Well, a few days ago he found indications of a big lead in the rock, and instead of rushin’ out and yellin’ like an honest man, and callin’ in the boys to drink, he sneaks off to ’Frisco, and goes to the bank to get ’em to take a hand in it.  Well, you know, when Jim Stacy takes a hand in anything, it’s both hands, and the bank wouldn’t see it until he promised to guarantee possession of the whole abandoned claim,—­’dips, spurs, and angles,’—­and let them work the whole thing, which the d——­d fool did, and the bank agreed to send an expert down there to-morrow to report.  But while he was away some one on our side, who was an expert also, got wind of it, and made an examination all by himself, and found it was a vein sure enough and a big thing, and some one else on our side found out, too, all that Marshall had promised the bank and what the bank had promised him.  Now, gentlemen, when the bank sends down that expert to-morrow I expect that he will find you in possession of every part of the deserted claim except the spot where Tom is still working.”

“And what good is that to us?” asked one of the men contemptuously.

“Good?” repeated Steptoe harshly.  “Well, if you’re not as d——­d a fool as Marshall, you’ll see that if he has struck a lead or vein it’s bound to run across our claims, and what’s to keep us from sinking for it as long as Marshall hasn’t worked the other claims for years nor pre-empted them for this lead?”

“What’ll keep him from preempting now?”

“Our possession.”

“But if he can prove that the brothers left their claims to him to keep, he’ll just send the sheriff and his posse down upon us,” persisted the first speaker.

“It will take him three months to do that by law, and the sheriff and his posse can’t do it before as long as we’re in peaceable possession of it.  And by the time that expert and Marshall return they’ll find us in peaceful possession, unless we’re such blasted fools as to stay talking about it here!”