The work at the Great Snake interested him, as it did everybody. He occupied the morning about the works, poking into odd corners, questioning the workmen, making suggestions to Billy. He sent the horse dealer to Billy, and mentioned to the whim man that he might find a purchaser there. He often was enabled in his vaster leisure to perceive the little things that lacked and to point out their necessity to Billy, which individual was of course always duly grateful and hastened at once to remedy the defect. After a more or less lengthened visit the half-breed returned to camp. If it happened still to lack some time until dinner, he called on Moroney in the editorial rooms or exchanged sententious comments with Bill Martin, or chatted with one or the other of the visitors who happened to be in town. After dinner he disappeared until supper. The time was spent with Durand. The assaying was long since finished, but the two men had grown fond of each other's companionship. It was a silent companionship for the most part. Lafond smoked interminably his short black pipe, turned upside down, watching the naturalist setting carefully the delicate wings of a butterfly or arranging in a paper cylinder the skin of a bird, or searching, spectacled, in black volumes of Government reports. Occasionally, when Durand looked up from his absorption, they exchanged a few swift remarks, elided, compressed, telegraphic; for they understood each other so well that the unabridged form of speech was no longer necessary. On fine days they beat the brushy creek bottoms for the _Nitra_, the rare _Papilo_ which men supposed to be extinct. And then, after the early darkness of winter fell, they would be seized by strange obsessions of loquacity. Jacques, the raccoon, a ball of fur under the faint red stove, blinked at them shrewdly, wondering what it was all about.
In the evening, of course, Lafond had the Little Nugget to take care of. The saloon had as yet no rivals. The size of the town perhaps warranted another establishment, but Lafond was a monopolist by nature. He treated the men well, with a geniality behind which were unsounded depths of reserve. Therefore they respected him. The space about the iron stove before the bar came to be the Town Hall. Matters of public importance were discussed every evening. Billy there told things he ought not to have told. The atmosphere was expansive, encouraged one to show off. After one had recounted the obvious, one was inclined in the heat of the moment to fall back on the confidential, merely for lack of something else to say. The camp to a man knew the amount of Billy's expenditures, the number of his shafts. It heard extracts from all his letters to and from the East. It was acquainted with all his and the Company's plans. A good many of the cooler heads felt the intrinsic injudiciousness of this; but after all there could be no traitors among them, because in the end the prosperity of every man present depended on Billy's success.