Perhaps he had a chivalrous instinct that she would feel safer, more at ease, if she thought that others were somewhere near.

At any rate he did not tell her that his only partners were two burros and a mule.
I don't know what the little woman's opinion of Casey was, except that in the first enthusiasm of her gratitude to him she had called him a man and a gentleman.

She drove a bargain with him, as she supposed.

She would pay him so much more per day if he preferred to board himself, and having named the amount, Casey waited two minutes, as if he were meditating upon the matter, and then replied that it suited him all right.
Casey did not think much of her claims, though he did not tell her so.

In his opinion that tunnel should have been driven into the hill at a different point, where the indications of mineral were much stronger and the distance to the contact much less.