"I might."
Then there was another long pause. It was almost dark and the lights of the camp here and there stood out like gems against the deep of the moonless sky. Shmoker saw the Chink's cat—-otherwise all was hushed and still.
Hughes finally broke the silence. "I thought of taking up that ground to the east," he announced, "but I wired to Melbourne and they said, 'No.' It ain't any good anyhow, shouldn't advise you to peg there. I tried a prospect—no good!"
If Hughes hadn't pulled the possum out of his shirt and diverted attention by getting up and "Ketchy-ketchying" the little beast, I might not have thought much of what he said. But somehow, Shmoker's crooked tail, Hughes and the possum combined suggested things crooked, deep and cunning—and from that moment, I knew the ground was worth having.
"So long!" Hughes and the possum went off into the night.
"So long! . . . . Hello! what's he going that way for?" I thought.
Instead of turning into Ahlers', Hughes struck out between that pub and Cameron's and disappeared in the dark. This set me to thinking that he was going to hunt up Cameron.
I saw Higgins coming down from the Chink's store and waited for him to pass. O'Regan was with him and Isaac Brown. As soon as they dropped him and went into Ahlers', I tackled the old man.
"Higgins," said I, "Hughes is up to something."
"Good God!" He blurted out as though he had been shot, not waiting to hear what it might be.
"He asked me if I were going out to Buchanan with you to-morrow and I said maybe I would."
"And yer will, won't yer? Look here, sir, I tell you that Mount Buchanan ground is the biggest thing I ever saw—there's millions in it."
