shallow murmurs.

They would learn one day that a cross-cut was to be started on the Last
Chance, or that the concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be
shipped to the Careless Creek smelter. Next they would learn that a new
herd of Galloways had done finely last season on the Bitter Root ranch;
that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy, that an
eighteen-inch vein had been struck in the Old Crow; that a concentrator
was needed at Hellandgone, and that rich gold-bearing copper and sand
bearing free gold had been found over on Horseback Ridge.

Another day they would drive far into a forest of spruce and hemlock to
a camp where thousands of ties were being cut and floated down to the
line of the new railway.

Sometimes they spent a night in one of the smaller mining camps off the
railroad, whereof facetious notes would appear in the nearest weekly
paper, such as:

"The Hon. Peter Bines and his grandson, who is a chip of the old block,
spent Tuesday night at Rock Rip. Young Bines played the deal from soda
card to hock at Lem Tully's Turf Exchange, and showed Lem's dealer good
and plenty that there's no piker strain in him."

Or, it might be:

"Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last
week as low as eighty chips for a dollar; It is sad to see this noble
game dragging along in the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a
favourable omen the appearance of Uncle Peter Bines and his grandson