He turned his frank young eyes upon them; they glanced
helplessly at each other. Yet his first concern was for them, his first
instinct paternal and protecting. He ran his eyes quickly over them;
they were all there and apparently in their usual condition. "Anything
wrong with the claim?" he suggested.
Without looking at him the Right Bower rose, leaned against the open
door with his hands behind him and his face towards the landscape, and
said, apparently to the distant prospect: "The claim's played out, the
partnership's played out, and the sooner we skedaddle out of this the
better. If," he added, turning to the Old Man, "if _you_ want to stay,
if you want to do Chinaman's work at Chinaman's wages, if you want to
hang on to the charity of the traders at the Crossing, you can do it,
and enjoy the prospects and the Noah's doves alone. But we're
calculatin' to step out of it."
"But I haven't said I wanted to do it _alone_" protested the Old Man
with a gesture of bewilderment.
"If these are your general ideas of the partnership," continued the
Right Bower, clinging to the established hypothesis of the other
partners for support, "it ain't ours, and the only way we can prove it
is to stop the foolishness right here.
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