“Oh, well,”—­began the other.

“Then you think there might be something here, after all?”

“What is there here?”

“A very great deal.  There’s just as much here as there is anywhere else in the world.”

Mr. Ellsworth arose and stepped to the door.  For a moment he stood looking out at the twilight.  He turned suddenly to the young man.  “I’ll tell you,” said he.  “There’s something to you—­I don’t know what.  Drop all this.  Come on back.  I’ll think it over—­I’ll give you a place in my office.”

“You’d give me what?  Did you ever stop to think that you can’t give me anything?”

Surprise sat on his visitor’s face. “Nada!” cried Dan Anderson.  “Me go back there and work on a salary for you?  Me check my immortal soul on your hat-rack?  Me live scared of my life, like all the rest of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that hell?  If I should do that, I’d be giving you some license for the opinion of me you once expressed, before you really knew me.”

“But what have you got out here?” repeated the other, stupidly.

Dan Anderson made no answer, except a sweep of his hand to the mountains, and an unconscious swell of the broad chest beneath his blue shirt.

“What made you come?” insisted Mr. Ellsworth, feeling around for the neck of the bottle, which had been forgotten.

“You know almighty well why I came.  But let that go.  Let’s say I came for the express purpose of handling your local interests when you buy our coal-mines and try to get a railroad somewhere near our valley if you have luck later.  I’m going to be your kind and loving partner in that deal, and I’ll soak you the limit in everything I do for you.  You watch me.  I’m going to stay here, and I’m going to work all I want to.  When I don’t want to, there isn’t any living mortal soul that’s going to crack a whip over me and tell me I’ve got to.”

“Things seem rather strange,” began Mr. Ellsworth.  “You talk as though I were obliged to put money into these mines.”

“Of course you will.  You can’t help it.  You never saw a better opportunity for investment in all your life.  But now let me tell you another thing, which I oughtn’t to tell you if I served you right.  You go slow while you’re here.  There is plenty of gold in this valley.  There isn’t a fellow in this settlement who hasn’t got a quart glass fruit-jar full of gold nuggets and dust under his bed, and who isn’t just waiting and pining to show it to some stranger like yourself.  You’re Glad Tidings in this town.  You couldn’t walk to-morrow if you took all the free samples of solid gold the boys would offer you.  You’d get dizzy looking down prospect holes.  You wouldn’t know where you were; and when you came to; you’d own about fifty gold-mines, with all the dips, spurs, and angles, and all the variations of the magnetic needle to wit and aforesaid.  Now, I oughtn’t to take care of you.  I don’t owe you a thing on earth.  But because you brought—­well, because—­anyhow, I’m going to take care of you, while you’re here, and see that you get a square deal.”