Ashbury, who was a good judge of character, and had been studying Pete over the tops of his glasses, wordlessly took a wallet from his pocket, and counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills. “That’s what he meant,” he said, and shoved them across to Pete.
Pete picked the bills up, looked at them, twisted them in his fingers, then dropped them and let them lie in the center of the table.
“Don’t want them?” Ashbury asked.
“Not until you say the word,” Pete said.
“I’m saying it.”
“Wait until you hear what I got to say.”
“Go ahead,” I told him.
“Well,” Pete said, “I know a couple of pretty smooth ways of salting a gold-dredger claim so that the devil himself can’t figure it out.”
“What are they?”
“Well, now,” Pete said, “in order to really get the idea, I got to tell you a couple of stories. This goes back to the Klondike when a big company was figurin’ on comin’ in there. A guy had a bunch of ground he wanted to sell, and the company didn’t think it was any good, but the bird told such a story they decided to drill it.
“Well, the minute they started drillin’ it, they knew they’d struck a bonanza. Values were there just the way they should be. They started low at the top, and were heavy down on bedrock. They punched hole after hole, and every hole gave ’em the same results. The ground was absolutely uniform. They bought the place, but just before they started dredgin’ somebody got a bright idea and punched down a couple more test holes— The values were so thin you couldn’t see ’em with a magnifying glass.”
“What had happened?” I asked. “Was the claim salted?”
“Sure it was salted.”
“But weren’t they looking out for that?”
“Of course they were watching out for it, and the guy salted it right under their noses. Here, I’ll show you how. Ever see gold panned?”
I shook my head.
Pete picked up a gold pan with its typical sloping sides, and curled rim. He squatted down on his heels and held the gold pan balanced in between his knees. “This is the way a guy pans gold, see?” He twisted the pan back and forth, shaking it with his wrists. “You keep the stuff under water. The idea is to get all the gold mixed up with the water so it settles to the bottom of the pan.”
I nodded.
“Well,” Pete said, “a man pans like this. He’s smokin’. See? He’s always got a right to smoke. He takes a sack of tobacco outa his pocket an’ rolls his own, or, if he’s a little different type, he has a package of tailor-made cigarettes in his pocket. Me, I use my own, because the minute I started smokin’ tailor made cigarettes, anybody that knew me would get suspicious.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Well,” Pete said, “that’s all there is to it.”
“I don’t get you,” Ashbury said.
“Don’t you see? The tobacco is just about a quarter gold dust. I put just as much tobacco as I want into the cigarette, and I determine the values in each pan by the length of time it takes me to pan it out. While I’m smoking, the ashes from the cigarette are droppin’ down into the gold pan. Nobody thinks anything of that.”
Ashbury gave a low whistle.
“And then there’s another way,” Pete went on. “You climb up on a drill rig, an’ you take a marlinspike an’ spread the strands of the rope apart, then you put in a bunch of gold dust. You do that all the way down the whole length of the rope, then in the mornin’ when they start drillin’, the jar of the bit on the ground dislodged little particles of gold dust which drop down the casing into the hole.”
I said, “All right, Pete, what we want is to have those holes show so much more gold coming out than they’re putting in, that they’ll come to the conclusion they really have a bonanza. But it’ll have to be done so all the values show up after they get below the old level of work.”
“Shucks,” Pete said. “They don’t know where the old level of work was. That bunch don’t know anything. They’re just goin’ through motions. I watched ’em. They’re so damn clumsy, I swear to God I almost started over and said to the driller, ‘Look here, buddy, I don’t want to tell a man his business, but if you can’t make a better job of salting a claim than that, for God’s sake, stand to one side and let a guy that really knows how give you a few pointers.’ ”
Ashbury chuckled. Alta laughed out loud. I pushed the five one-hundred-dollar bills across the table toward Pete Digger.
“It’s all yours,” I said.
Pete picked up the bills, folded them, and put them in his pocket.
“When can you start?” Ashbury asked.
“You’re in a hurry?”
“Yes.”
“I got a little dust in there,” Pete said, jerking his head toward a cupboard. “Stuff I’ve picked up here and there in the pockets, pay dirt that had dropped out of some of the old cleanups. It’s enough for what we’ll want.”
“How can you get on the property?” I asked him.
“That’s a cinch. They’ve been trying to get me to work ever since they started. They don’t know too much about handling the job.”
“You don’t dare to have values start running up just before you go to work. It would be too much of a coincidence,” I warned.
“Leave that to me, brother. I’m going down there tonight in the moonlight an’ take a marlinspike, an’ salt a bunch of gold in that drill rope. Their values’ll start pickin’ up tomorrow. I think that drill rope’s all I’m goin’ to need.”
I said, “Keep it up until I tell you to stop.”
“How’ll you tell me?”
“When you get a postal card signed ‘D.L.’ saying, ‘Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here,’ you’ll know it’s time to quit.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get started in about half an hour.”
We shook hands all around, and as we climbed in the car Ashbury said, “That’s a fine piece of work, Donald.”
Chapter eleven
No one talked much as I drove the car to the main highway, turned into the automobile camp, and switched off the lights and motor. I got out and started to open the door on the other side, then saw a car I hadn’t seen before, and got a glimpse at an E embedded in a diamond on the license plate.
I didn’t say a word to the others, but walked directly toward my own cabin.
Two men stepped out of the shadows. One of them said, “Your name Lam?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Donald Lam?”
“Yes.”
“Come on in. We want to talk with you. We have telegraphic instructions to pick you up.”
I was hoping that Ashbury and Alta would have sense enough to keep out of it. They got out of the car and stood by the door. Alta’s face was white in the moonlight.
“Who are these folks?” the officer asked, indicating Ashbury and his daughter with a jerk of his head.
“They picked me up down the road a piece and asked me if I wanted a ride.”
One of the officers wore the uniform of the state highway patrol, and the other, I gathered, was a local officer.
“What do you want?”
“Didn’t you leave rather suddenly?”
“I’m working.”
“On what?”
“I’d prefer not to make any statements.”
“Did you know a man named Ringold?”
“I read in the paper about his murder.”
“Know anything about it?”
“No, of course not. Why?”
“Weren’t you in the hotel the night he was killed? Didn’t you talk with a blonde at the cigar stand, and again with a clerk, trying to pump them about Ringold?”
“Gosh, no!” I said, backing away a step or two and staring at them as though I thought they were mad. “Say, wait a minute. Who are you birds, anyway? Are you officers?”