so did the ducks and the geese and the fowls, although you wouldn't think it to see them all cluster about Ahlers when he came down the yard each day with a can of corn. For one old duck had a broken wing, and the hens and geese knew more about broom handles than did even poor Shmoker, and one and all they knew "Gott in Himmel" and "Gott tam" as well as they knew the broom.
Such was the sad state of affairs at "Mine Haus" when the miners began to desert it. But there was one crowd living out at the "Comet," headed by Bob Jenkins and his brother Jack, that rode in to it regularly every week for a good drink. They did not patronize "Paddy Fahy's," because their account at Ahler's had grown so big they hadn't the face. They had not the money to "wipe the slate."
Besides Bob and Jack Jenkins there was Isaac Brown, who looked upon himself as "King of Maytown," because he was "our own correspondent" for the Cooktown Independent. Brown used to call an accident "a melancholy catastrophe," and he announced the arrival of Mrs. Brown's baby as "a son and heir was ushered into the world." Oh, Brown was a great man! He had a long, black, bushy beard, of which he always chewed the ends, and a "breath" that he had been cultivating "on the cheap" for many years, in fact ever since he had lost his first wife.
To go back to Bob Jenkins: Bob ran a battery out at the "Comet." It belonged to another man—nobody knew how he got it—but now and then he would cart headings to it from some old claim and have a crushing. All Maytown knew when Bob had a good crushing, and Ahlers was delighted, for he had visions of Bob's score being wiped out—but it never was. Bob got drunk all the same, however.
Bob had just finished a crushing that cleaned up badly. He had put through about fifty tons, but there
