“He is in his proper longitude out here, then,” said Lidgerwood rather grimly.  “This is the ‘hold-up’s heaven.’”

“I’ll bet Flemister is doing his share of the looting,” laughed the president.  “Is he alone in the mine?”

“I don’t know that he has any partners.  Somebody told me, when I first came over here, that Gridley, our master-mechanic, was in with him; but Gridley says that is a mistake—­that he thinks too much of his reputation to be Flemister’s partner.”

“Hank Gridley,” mused the president; “Hank Gridley and ‘his reputation’!  It would certainly be a pity if that were to get corroded in any way.  There is a man who properly belongs to the Stone Age—­what you might call an elemental ’scoundrel.”

“You surprise me!” exclaimed Lidgerwood.  “I didn’t like him at first, but I am convinced now that it was only unreasoning prejudice.  He appeals to me as being anything but a scoundrel.”

“Well, perhaps the word is a bit too savage,” admitted Gridley’s accuser.  “What I meant was that he has capabilities that way, and not much moral restraint.  He is the kind of man to wade through fire and blood to gain his object, without the slightest thought of the consequences to others.  Ever hear the story of his marriage?  No?  Remind me of it some time, and I’ll tell you.  But we were speaking of Flemister.  You say the Wire-Silver has turned out pretty well?”

“Very well indeed, I believe.  Flemister seems to have money to burn.”

“He always has, his own or somebody else’s.  It makes little difference to him.  The way he got the Wire-Silver would have made Black-Beard the pirate turn green with envy.  Know anything about the history of the mine?”

Lidgerwood shook his head.

“Well, I do; just happen to.  You know how it lies—­on the western slope of Little Butte ridge?”

“Yes.”

“That is where it lies now.  But the original openings were made on the eastern slope of the butte.  They didn’t pan out very well, and Flemister began to look for a victim to whom he could sell.  About that time a man, whose name I can never recall, took up a claim on the western slope of the ridge directly opposite Flemister.  This man struck it pretty rich, and Flemister began to bully him on the plea that the new discovery was only a continuation of his own vein straight through the hill.  You can guess what happened.”

“Fairly well,” said Lidgerwood.  “Flemister lawed the other man out.”

“He did worse than that; he drove straight into the hill, past his own lines, and actually took the money out of the other man’s mine to use as a fighting fund.  I don’t know how the courts sifted it out, finally; I didn’t follow it up very closely.  But Flemister put the other man to the wall in the end—­’put it all over him,’ as your man Bradford would say.  There was some domestic tragedy involved, too, in which Flemister played the devil with the other man’s family; but I don’t know any of the details.”