That was the convincing part of Al's story,--repeating the things Luella had said before the courthouse. Al claimed to have been there, and to have heard her talk. He had chanced to pass by the steps just as Jim Lambert, Rayfield and Emmett were coming up to the courthouse from town. He claimed to have been in the offices of Jim Lambert later, when the plot was hatched. If that were a lie, how could Al repeat what the parrot must have said? How could he know that the burros, and the parrot with them, had waited before the courthouse steps alone or otherwise? Al had named the very day and the very hour of Bill's visit to the recorder's office. The date and hour were written upon his location filing, together with book and page of the record. Had Bill chanced to forget, that record would serve to remind him; but Bill did not forget. Al had never seen those papers. He could not possibly have told about Luella unless he had both seen and heard her there. The incredible feature of the yarn was the fact that Rayfield and Emmett--John and Walter, he had come to call them in his mind--had been the chief instigators of the plot. And there again Bill floundered in vain speculation. What _was_ the plot? Not the mere creation of jobs for themselves, surely? Al had professed ignorance of their governmental position. They may have been research men, as they claimed. He didn't know, and he had never heard that talked about, except as a plausible reason for their showing up at Bill's claims. He was sure that they had lied about working out from Las Vegas west, however; having been in Goldfield, they could not have been prospecting Forty Mile Canyon at that particular time. What had they gained? A block of stock for each of them, to be sure. Bill had been generous; had given them each fifty thousand shares of the promotion stock. He could scarcely credit any plot to get it, however. Still, that meant fifty thousand dollars immediately after the company was organized. Bill had known of many a murder committed for a fraction of that amount. One discrepancy in the story eluded him for some time, though he groped for it vaguely. Then Al's retort came to him with force--"Not if they was gittin' five dollars where you was gittin' one"--and set him scowling, vacant-eyed, at the tent wall. _Were_ they getting five dollars to his one? How? They had full control, to be sure. But their control seemed to be of the conservative, constructive kind that favored dividends. And there was the thing that seemed incredible. Would crooks, of the bold type that would follow a prospector and lay cunning plans to grab what he had found, play a straight game afterwards? It did not seem to Bill that it could be possible. A crook is a crook. Once in control, they could have raided and wrecked the company a dozen times in his absence. Instead, they had worried over one passed dividend.