“We’ll just thresh this question out, turn the spot-light on every side of it, present and future. We ought to have done it before, but that first victory was a little too heady. Nothing like a defeat to clear the brain. What’s the first thing they’ll do? They won’t waste time sinking a shaft if they can help it. That’s the hardest kind of country rock. They’ll try to buy up the lease from Douglas and Osborne. I haven’t the lease with me, but most leases carry a clause which permits the original lessees to sub-let. I fancy I could get out an injunction and delay them, however, until the lease expired. But what they can do, all right, is to bribe those two men to give them the use of their cross-cut--the one that has already struck your vein--while they were sinking the shaft. Do you think they’ll fall for it?” “My experience is that most men can be bribed if the roll is big enough. Osborne and Douglas are pretty discouraged, although they’ve begun to drift across the fault. I’ll talk to them, but they’re not square men. Amalgamated could pretend to be sinking a shaft against time itself, and be drifting for all they were worth on the Primo vein. I understand that Amalgamated’s head geologist has been nosing round for some time and has concluded there’s a parallel fissure in their claim and that they can ‘prove’ apex rights.” “How deep do you figure they’d have to sink to strike the vein at that point?” “About two hundred feet, owing to that surface bump.” “And it apexes here. There’s no getting round that--with a square deal. But they figure on proving that they’ve the main vein, and yours is an offshoot? The case would go to Helena--to the Federal Courts--as Amalgamated was incorporated out of the state. That’s bad. If the case could be tried in Virginia City, and there was a good healthy suspicion that the Judge was expecting to retire in comfort, you could apply for a change of venue--result of that odorous chapter in our history when every judge was on the pay roll of either Heinze or Amalgamated. Well, at least there’s public opinion to be considered; the state is waking up. Here is one thing we can do. If it comes to a knock-out fight and the case goes to Helena, we can get out an expert geologist of national reputation, whose record shows him to be above bribes, and who will be bound to testify that the vein apexes in your claim. Becke of the School of Mines, will find the man we want. Now, what’s your first move?” “To stope the vein as far as the boundary line, which of course is my side-line, and as far down as possible. If they won in the courts I’d have to fork over eventually, but they’d have to wait for it, and they’ll get a good jolt underground.” “You’re much too calm. What have you got up your sleeve?”