"I think you're also right about him. What
makes you think so, anyway?"
Miss Georgie twirled a ring upon her middle finger for a moment
before she looked up at him.
"Do you know anything about mining laws?" she asked, and when he
swung his head slightly to one side in a tacit negative, she went
on: "You say there are eight jumpers. Concerted action, that.
Premeditated. My daddy was a lawyer," she threw in by way of
explanation. "I used to help him in the office a good deal.
When he--died, I didn't know enough to go on and be a lawyer
myself, so I took to this." She waved her hand impatiently
toward the telegraph instrument.
"So it's like this: Eight men can take placer claims--can hold
them, you know--for one man. That's the limit, a hundred and
sixty acres. Those eight men aren't jumping that ranch as eight
individuals; they're in the employ of a principal who is
engineering the affair. If I were going to shy a pebble at the
head mogul, I'd sure try hard to hit our corpulent friend with
the fishy eye.
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