Laughlin shook his head sadly. "Seems her derned old parrot was shoutin’ for food and as it had all give out she wants me to go down to the store for some more. But I must say that she had just come in herself and did n’t know nothin’ about the business that was goin’ on upstairs. When Canlan and the doctor did arrive and go up the fellow was dead—sure thing—dead as—dead as—" he searched for the simile without which he could not speak for long. "Dead as God!" he said in a horrible whisper, raising his grey eyebrows. I shuddered somehow at the words, and yet in such a red-hot, ungodly place as Baker City I could almost understand the phrase. There was another pause after that and then Laughlin cleared his throat again and held up a lean finger in my face. "There’s where the place comes in," said he, "where you says ’the plot thickens,’ for I ’m a son of a gun if word did n’t come down next day that the fellers up at the Poorman Mine had picked up just such another dead-beat. This here corpse of which I bin tellin’ you was indemnified after as having been in company with the other. But the man the Poorman boys picked up was jest able to tell them that he had seen the lights o’ their bunk-house and was trying to make for it. Told them that he and two partners had struck it rich in the mountains, pow’ful rich, he said, and hed all been so fevered like that they let grub run out. Then they went out looking for something to shoot up and could n’t find a thing. One of ’em went off then to fetch supplies, lost his way in them mountains, wanders about nigh onto a week—and hits their own camp ag’in at the end o’ that time. Isn’t it terrible? You’d think that after striking it luck jest turned about and hed a laugh at ’em for a change. They comes rushin’ on him, the other two, expecting grub— Grub nothing! He was too derned tired to budge then, and so the other two sets out then— This fellow what the Poorman boys picked up was doin’ his level best to tell ’em where the place was, for the sake of his partner left there, and in the middle of his talk he took a fit and never came out of it. All they know is that there was a cabin built at the place. That’s the story for you." "But what about the man who was brought down here; did he not leave any indication?" "Now you ’re askin’," said Laughlin. "But I see you bin payin’ attention to this yere story. Now you’re askin’. Nobody knows whether he did or not. But this I can tell you—that Apache Kid and Larry Donoghue has done nothing since then but jest wander about with the tail of an eye on Canlan, and Canlan returns the compliment. And here ’s miners comin’ in from the Poorman and stoppin’ in town a night and trying to fill Apache Kid and his mate full, and trying the same on Canlan to get them to talk, and them just sittin’ smilin’ through it all, and nobody knows what they think."