"I'll do all I can, Bill. If you're going to be one of the family I might as well start bossing yuh now. I want to see yuh make good without hurting the other fellow. It can be done, and if it's done rightly, there ain't any cleaner money in the world than what comes out of the ground. Mines or ranches, you're giving the world something it never had before; something it needs. Most money-making is just swapping the ownership of necessities, or else changing the shape and form of them and selling them that way. But when you take something outa old Mother Earth, you've got it clean. What I can't stomach is the way crooks come flockin' around every new strike, and making it rotten business. "Every boom suffers from 'em. When the news of this leaks out--_has_ it leaked out, yet?" Bill shook his head, though Don could not see him in the dark. "Not so far as I know. I just brought down supplies and a mucker from Goldfield--and there's something funny happened up there. The darn parrot was outside while I was in recording the claims, and when I came out, she commenced talking a new speech that I'll swear _I_ never taught her. She got it off to-night, if you noticed." Bill blushed consciously, but went on. "She said, 'Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. We'll lay low--see the recorder.' Only, she couldn't quite get the last word out. Now, she heard that said in Goldfield, while I was in the recorder's office, or she couldn't have repeated it. I've learned that much about parrots. She talks right along, and seems to know what she means--way she calls me down, sometimes, is right human--but she has to hear a sentence before she can say it. One hearing's enough, if she happens to take a notion to the words. But it was funny, her saying that." He flicked the ash off his cigarette. "I shut her up till I was ready to leave," he added. "I guess it didn't amount to anything. I wasn't trailed, anyway." "What about these fellows camped up there? You sure they ain't----" "Oh, they came from Las Vegas way. No, they're not on my trail--or if they are they're pretty damned smooth." "Crooks are," Don remarked laconically. "How would the parrot be able to tip your hand? Ever think that out?" "No-o--only, I talk to the menagerie in camp, of course. When a fellow doesn't see a human for weeks at a time, he'll talk to anything; and Luella's next to human, seems like. Yes, I talked about buying her a gold perch, I remember, and about striking it. I was one tickled man, Don, when I first uncovered that vein and saw the gold showing right up in the rock."