Once again the smoke belched from the hoisting house of the Cross, and the throb of the pumps came, hollow and clanking, from the shaft below. A stream of discolored water swirled into the creek from the waste pipes, and the rainbow trout, affrighted and disgusted, forsook its reaches and sought the pools of the river into which it emptied.

Slowly they gained on its depths, and each day the murk swam lower, and the newly oiled cage waited for its freshly stretched cable, one which had happened to be coiled in the store-house. The compressor shivered and vibrated as the pistons drove clean, sweet air through the long-disused pipes, and at last the partners knew they could reach the anticipated six-hundred-foot level and form their own conclusions.

"Well, here goes," said Bill, grinning from under his sou'wester as they entered the cage with lamps in hand. "We'll see how she looks if the air pipes aren't broken."

They saw the slimy black sides of the shaft slip past them as Bells Park dropped them into the depths, and felt the cage slow down as he saw his pointer above the drum indicate the approach of the six-hundred-foot level. They stepped out cautiously, whiffed the air, and knew that the pipes, which had been protected by the water, were intact, and that they had no need to fear foul air. The rusted rails, slime-covered, beneath their rubber boots, glowed a vivid red as they inspected the timbering above, and saw that the sparse stulls, caps, and columns were still holding their own, and that the heavy porphyritic formation would scarcely have given had the timbers rotted away. Dank, glistening walls and a tremulous waving blackness were ahead of them as they cautiously invaded the long-deserted precincts, scraping and striking here and there with their prospector's picks in search of the lost lead.

"About two hundred feet from the shaft, Bells said," Dick commented. "And this must be about the place where they cut through pay ore in search of another lobe of the Bonanza Chute. What thieves they were!"

He suddenly became aware that his companion was not with him, and whirled round. Back of him shone a tiny spark of flaring light, striving to illumine the solid blackness. He paused expectantly, and a voice came bellowing through the dark:

"Here it is. The old man's right, I think. This looks like ore to me."

Dick hastened back, and assisted while they broke away the looser pieces of green rock, glowing dully, and filled their sample sacks.

Three hours later they stood over the scales in the log assay-house above, and congratulated each other.

"It'll pay!" Dick declared gleefully. "Not much, but enough to justify going on with the work. I am glad I wrote Sloan that I should draw on him, and now we'll go ahead and hire a small gang to set the mill and the Cross in shape."

They were like boys when they crossed to the engine house and told the news to the hard-worked engineer, who chuckeled softly and asserted that he had "told them so."

"Now, the best way for you to get a gang around here," he said, "is to go down to Goldpan and tell 'The Lily' you want her to pass the word, or stick a sign up in her place saying what men, and how many, you want."

"Sounds like a nice name," Mathews commented.

"The Lily?" questioned Dick, anxious as to who this camp character could be.

"Sure," the engineer rasped, as if annoyed by their ignorance. "Ain't you never heard of her? Well, her right name, so they tell, is Lily Meredith. She owns the place called the High Light. Everybody knows her. She's square, even if she does run a dance hall and rents a gamblin' joint. She don't stand for nothin' crooked, Lily don't. She pays her way, and asks no favors. Go down and tell her you want men. They all go there, some time or another."

He stooped over to inspect the fire under the small boiler he was working, and straightened up before he went on. Through the black coating on his face, he appeared thoughtful.

"Best time to see The Lily and get action is at night. All the day-shift men hang around the camp then, and, besides that, they've got a new batch of placer ground about a mile and a half over the other side, and lots of them fellers come over. Want to go to-day?"

The partners looked at each other, as if consulting, and then Dick said: "Yes. I think the sooner the better."

Bells Park pulled the visor of his greasy little cap lower over his eyes, and stepped to the door.

"Come out here onto the yard," he said, and they followed. "Go down to the Rattler, then bear off to the right. The trail starts in back of the last shanty on the right-hand side. You see that gap up yonder? Not the big one, but the narrow one." He pointed with a grimy hand. "Well, you go right through that and drop down, and you'll see the camp below you. It's a stiff climb, but the trail's good, and it's just about two miles over there. It's so plain you can make it home by moonlight."

Without further ceremony or advice, he returned into the boiler-room, and the partners, after but slight preparations, began their journey.

It was a stiff climb! The sun had set, and the long twilight was giving way to darkness when they came down the trail into the upper end of the camp. Some embryo artist was painfully overworking an accordion, while a dog rendered melancholy by the unmusical noise, occasionally accompanied him with prolonged howls. A belated ore trailer, with the front wagon creaking under the whine of the brakes and the chains of the six horses clanking, lurched down from a road on the far side of the long, straggling street, and passed them, the horses' heads hanging as if overwork had robbed them of all stable-going spirit of eagerness.

The steady, booming "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty effort to be pathetic.

"Seems right homelike! Don't it?" Bill grinned and chuckled. "That's one right nice thing about minin'. You can go from Dawson to Chiapas, and a camp's a camp! Always the same. I reckon if you went up the street far enough you'd find a Miner's Home Saloon, maybe a Northern Light or two, and you can bet on there bein' a First Class."

The High Light proved to be the most pretentious resort in Goldpan. For one thing it had plate-glass windows and a gorgeous sign painted thereon. Its double doors were wide, and at the front was a bar with a brass rail that, by its very brightness, told only too plainly that the evening's trade had not commenced. Two bartenders, one with a huge crest of hair waved back, and the other with his parted in the middle, plastered low and curled at the ends, betokened diverse taste in barbering. A Chinese was giving the last polish to a huge pile of glasses, thick and heavy.

On the other side of the room, behind a roulette wheel, a man who looked more like a country parson than a gambler sat reading a thumbed copy of Taine's "English Literature." Three faro layouts stretched themselves in line as if watching for newcomers, and in the rear a man was lighting the coal-oil lamps of the dance hall. It was separated from the front part of the house by an iron rail, and had boxes completely around an upper tier and supported by log pillars beneath, and a tiny stage with a badly worn drop curtain.

"Is the boss here?" Bill asked, pausing in front of the man with a wave.

"Who do you mean—Lily?" was the familiar reply.

"Yes."

"I think she's over helpin' nurse the Widder Flannery's sick kids this afternoon. They've got chicken pox. Might go over there and see her if you're in a rush."

"We didn't say we wanted to borrow money," Bill retorted to the jocular latter part of the bartender's speech. "What time will she be here?"

"About ten, I guess," was the more courteous reply.

The partners walked out and past the row of buildings until they came to a general store, where they occupied themselves in making out an order for supplies and arranging for their delivery on the following day. The trader was a loquacious individual with the unmistakable "Yankee" twang and nasal whine of the man from that important speck of the United States called New England.

When they again turned into the street, the long twilight had been replaced by night, and on the tops of the high peaks to the westward the light of the full moon was beginning to paint the chill white with a shining glow. The street was filled with men, most of them scorning the narrow board walks and traversing the roadway. A pandemonium of sound was robbing the night of peace through music, of assorted character, which boiled forth from open doors in discordant business rivalry, but underneath it all was the steady, dull monotone of the stamp-mill, remorselessly beating the ore as if in eternal industry.

"Hardly know the place now, eh?" Bill said, as they entered the open doors of the High Light. "It certainly keeps gettin' more homelike. Camp must be makin' money, eh?"

Dick did not answer. He was staring at a woman who stood at the lower end of the bar outside, and talking to a man with a medicine case in his hand. He surmised that she must be The Lily, and was astonished. He had expected the customary brazen appearance of other camp women he had known in his years of wandering; the hard-faced, combatative type produced by greed. Instead, he saw a woman of perhaps thirty years of age, or in that vague boundary between thirty and thirty-five.

She was dressed in a short skirt, wore a spotless shirt waist over an exceptionally graceful pair of shoulders, and her hair, neatly coiled in heavy bronze folds, was surmounted by a white hat of the frontier type, dented in regulation form with four hollows.

From the hat to the high tan boots, she was neat and womanly; yet it was not this that attracted him so much as her profile. From the straight brow, down over the high, fine nose and the firm lips to the firmer chin, the face was perfect.

As if sensing his inspection, she turned toward him, and met his wondering eyes. Her appraisement was calm, repressed, and cold. Her face gave him the impression that she had forgotten how to smile. Townsend advanced toward her, certain that she must be the proprietress of the High Light.

"You are Miss Meredith?" he interrogated, as he halted in front of her.

"Mrs. Meredith," she corrected, still unbending, and looking at him a question as to his business.

A forgotten courtesy impelled him to remove his hat as he introduced himself, but Mathews did not follow it when he was introduced, and reached out and caught her competent hand with a hard grip. Dick explained his errand, feeling, all the time under that steady look, that he was being measured.

"Oh, yes, they'll be all right by to-morrow, Lily," the doctor interrupted. "Excuse me for being so abrupt, but I must go now. Good-night."

"Good-night," she answered, and then: "I'll be up there at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon. Ah, you were saying you wanted——"

She had turned to the partners again with her unfinished question leading them on to state their mission.

"Men. Here's a list," Dick answered, handing her a memorandum calling for go many millmen, so many drill runners, swampers, car handlers, and so forth; in all, a list of twenty odd.

"Who told you to come here?" She exploded the question as if it were vital.

"Park. Bells Park."

She laughed mirthlessly between lips that did not smile and regular, white teeth. But her laugh belied her lack of sympathy.

"Poor old Bells!" she said, with a touch of sadness in her voice. "Poor old fool! I tried to keep him from gambling when he had money, and he went broke, like all the other fools. But he loved his wife. He made her happy. Some one in this world must be happy. So he came back, did he? And is up there at the Cross? Well, he's a faithful man. I'm not an employment agency, but maybe I can help you. I would do it for Bells. I like him. Good men are scarce. The bums and loafers are always easy to get. There isn't a mine around here that isn't looking for good men, since they made that discovery over in the flat. Most of them broke to the placer ground. Wages are nothing when there's a chance for better."

She had not looked at Dick as she talked, but had her eyes fixed on the paper, though not seeming to scan its contents. The room was crowded with men and filled with a confused volume of sound as she spoke, the click and whir of the wheel, the monotonous voice of the student—turned gambler—calling "Single O and the house wins. All down?" the sharp snap of the case-keeper's buttons before the faro layouts, the screech of the orchestra in the dance hall, and the heavy shuffling of feet; yet her words and intonations were distinct.

"We would like to get them as soon as we can," Dick answered. "We have unwatered the main shaft and——"

From the dance hall in the rear there came a shrill, high shriek, oaths, shouts, and the orchestra stopped playing. Men jumped to their feet from the faro layouts, and then, mob-like, began to surge toward the door, while in the lead, uttering scream on scream, ran one of the dance-hall girls with her gaudy dress bursting into enveloping flame. She had the terror of a panic-stricken animal flying into the danger of the open air to die.

As if springing forward from live ground, Mathews leaped into her path, and caught her in his arms. He jammed her forward ahead of him, taking no pains to shield her body save with his bent arm, and seized the cover of the roulette wheel, which lay neatly folded on the end of the bar.

"Give me room!" he bellowed, in his heavy, thunderous voice. "Stop 'em, Dick! For God's sake, stop 'em!"

Dick leaped in among the crowd that was madly stampeding—women with faces whose terror showed through masks of rouge, shrieking, men who cursed, trampled, and elbowed their way to the outer air, and the wild-eyed musicians seeking to escape from a fire-trap. Dick struck right and left, and in the little space created Bill swathed the girl in the cover, smothering the flames. And all the time he shouted:

"Don't run. What's the matter with you? Go back and put the fire out! Don't be idiots!"

As suddenly as it had commenced the panic subsided, and the tide turned the other way. Sobbing women hovered round the door, and men began to form a bucket line. In a long age of five or ten minutes the excitement was over, and the fire extinguished. The dance-hall floor was littered with pieces of scorched wood torn bodily from the boxes, and the remnants of the lamp which had exploded and caused the havoc were being swept into the sodden, steaming heap in the center of the room.

Through the press at the sides came The Lily, who, in the turmoil, had sought refuge behind the bar. The partners, stooping over the unconscious, swaddled figure on the floor, looked up at her, and Dick saw that her face was as calm and unemotional as ever.

"Bring her to my room," she said; "I'll show you where it is. You, Tim," she called to one of the bartenders, "go as quickly as you can and get Doctor Mills."

The partners meekly followed her lead, pausing but once, when she turned to hold up an authoritative hand and tell the curious ones who formed a wake that they must go back, or at least not come ahead to make the case more difficult. Mathews carried his senseless burden as easily as if it were of no weight, and even as they turned up a hallway leading to a flight of stairs ascending to The Lily's apartments, the doctor and bartender came running to join them.

Not until they had swathed the girl in cooling bandages did any one speak. Then, as they drew the sheet tenderly over her, they became conscious of one another. As Bill looked up through blistered eyelids, exposing a cruelly scorched face, his lips broke into a painful smile.

"Doctor," The Lily said, "now you had better care for this patient."

She put her firm, white fingers out, brushed the miner's singed hair back from his brow, and said: "I've forgotten your name, but—I want to say—you're a man!"



CHAPTER VI

MY LADY OF THE HORSE

"It serves you right for bein' so anxious to help one of them dance-hall women; not but what I'd probably 'a' done it myself," was the croaking, querulous consolation offered by Bells Park as he sat beside the plainly suffering and heavily bandaged Bill that night, or rather in the early hours of the morning, in the cabin on the Cross. "They ain't no good except for young fools to gallop around with over a floor."

He poured some more olive oil over the bandages, and relented enough to add: "All but The Lily, and she don't dance with none of 'em. She's all right, she is. Mighty peart looker, too. None purtier than Dorothy Presby, though."

Dick, looking up from where he sat with his tired chin resting on his tired hands and elbows, thought of the gruff Bully Presby with some interest.

"Oh, so the old Rattler owner has a daughter, eh?"

"I don't mean old skinflint Presby!" sharply corrected the engineer. "He ain't the only Presby in this whole United States, is he? He don't own the whole world and the name, even if he thinks he does. This Presby I'm talkin' about ain't no kin of his. He's too white. He owns all them sawmills on the other side of the Cross peak, about four miles from here. Got a railroad of his own. Worth about a billion, I reckon."

Dick's momentary interest subsided, but he heard the old man babbling on:

"I worked for him once, when Dorothy was a little bit of a kid. Him and me fought, but he's a white man. She's been away to some of those fool colleges for women back East, they say, for the last four or five years. It don't do women no good to know too much. My wife couldn't read or write, and she was the best woman that ever lived, bar none."

He looked around as if delivering a challenge, and, finding that no one was paying any attention to him, subsided, fidgeted for a minute, and then said he guessed he'd "turn in so's the water wouldn't gain on the pumps in the mornin'."

On the insistent demand of his partner, Dick also retired shortly, and the cabin on the hillside was dark save for the dim light that glowed in the sufferer's room.

They began to straggle in, the men wanted, before the partners had finished their breakfast on the following morning. Some of them were real miners, and others were nondescripts, bearing out The Lily's statement that good men were scarce, but all were hired as they came, and the Croix d'Or began to thrill with activity.

A fat cook—and no miner can explain why a camp cook is always fat—beamed from the mess-house door. A blacksmith, accepting the ready name of "Smuts," oiled the rusted wheels of his blower, and swore patiently and softly at a new helper as he selected the drills for sharpening. Three Burley drill runners tinkered with their machines, and scraped off the verdigris and accumulated dust of storage; millmen began to reset the tables, strip the damaged plates, and lay in new water pipes to drip ceaselessly over the powered ore. Over all these watched Bill with his bandaged face, rumbling orders here and there, and tirelessly active. Out on the pipe line, winding by cut and trestle from the reservoir in the high hills, Dick superintended repairs and laid plans.

Leaving his gang replacing sections near the power-house, he climbed up the length of the line to discover, if possible, how far the labors of the vandal had extended. Foot by foot he had traversed it, almost to the reservoir itself, when he paused to breathe and look off at the mountains spread below and around.

The Cross, in the distance, was softened again to a miracle of dim yellow laid against a field of purple, and, like a speck, a huge eagle swept in circles round its point to come to rest on its extreme summit. He turned from admiring its flight to inspect a bowlder that had tumbled down from the slope above and come to rest in a big dent; it had smashed in the top of the pipe. He picked up a piece of a storm-broken limb, used it as a lever, and sent the rock crashing across the pipe to go bounding down the hillside as it gained momentum with every leap.

There was a startled snort, a sudden threshing of the brush, and it parted to disclose a girl astride a horse that was terrified and endeavoring his best to dismount his rider. Dick, surmising that horse and rider had suffered a narrow escape from the bowlder, ran toward them remorsefully, but the girl already had the animal in control after a display of splendid horsemanship.

"Thank you," she said, as he hastened toward the horse's head, intent on seizing the snaffle. "Please don't touch him. I can quiet him down."

"I am so sorry," he pleaded, with his hat in his hand. "I had no idea that any one ever rode up this way."

"Don't apologize," she answered, with a careless laugh. "No one ever does, save me. It's an old and favorite view of mine. I used to ride here, to see the Cross, many years ago, before I went away to school. So I came back to see my old friend, and—well—your bowlder would have struck us if my horse hadn't jumped."

She laughed again, and reached a yellow-gauntleted hand down to pat her mount's shoulder with a soothing caress. The horse stopped trembling, and looked at Dick with large, intelligent eyes.

"Ah," said Dick, remembering the garrulity of the engineer. "I believe you must be Miss Presby."

Even as she said simply: "I am, but how did you know? I don't remember ever seeing you," he took note of her modish blue riding-dress with divided skirts and patent-leather boots. There was a clean freshness about her person, a smiling candor in her eyes, and a fine, frank girlishness in her face that attracted him beyond measure. She appeared to be about twenty years of age, and was such a girl as those he had known and danced with, in those distant university days when his future seemed assured, and life a joyous conquest with all the odds in his favor. Now she was of another world, for he was, after all, but a workingman, while she, the daughter of a millionaire lumberman, would dance and associate with those other university men whose financial incomes enabled them to dawdle as they pleased through life. He had no bitterness in this summary, but he sustained an instant's longing for a taste of that old existence, and the camaraderie of such girls as the one who sat before him on her horse.

"No," he said, looking up at her, "you never saw me before. I have been in the Blue Mountains but six weeks. I am Richard Townsend."

Her face took on a look of aroused interest, different from the casual look she had been giving him in the brief minute of their meeting.

"Oh," she said, "then you must be the Mr. Townsend of the Croix d'Or. I learned of your arrival last night after I came home. You are rehabilitating the old mine?"

"Yes," he answered, smiling. "At least we are trying to. As to the outcome—I don't know."

"You mustn't say that!" she protested. "Faith in anything is the first requisite for success. That's what it says in the copybooks, doesn't it?"

She laughed again in her clear, mezzo voice, and then with a resumption of gravity gathered her reins into a firmer grip, and, as her horse lifted his head in response to the summons, said: "Anyway, I thank you for volunteering to rescue me, Mr. Townsend, and wish you lots of good luck, but please don't start any more bowlders down the hill, because if you do I shall be robbed of my most enjoyable trip each day. Good-by."

"Don't be afraid," he called to her, as she started away. "There are no more bowlders to roll."

He stood and watched her as she rode, masterfully seated on the black horse, around a crag that stuck out into the trail.

"'Faith in anything is the first requisite for success,'" he repeated to himself, striving to recall whether or not it was, as she had intimated, a hackneyed proverb for the young; yet there was something bracing in it, coming from her calm, young, womanly lips. "That's it; she has it," he again said to himself. "'Faith.' That's what I need." And he resumed his tramp up the mountainside with a better courage and more hope for the Croix d'Or. He was still vaguely troubled when he made his way back past the power-house, in a sliding, scrambling descent, his boots starting tiny avalanches of shale and loose rock to go clattering down the mountainside.

The new men were proving competent under the direction of a boss pipeman who had been made foreman, and Dick trudged away toward the mine, feeling that one part of the work, at least, would be speedily accomplished.

Bill was still striding backward and forward, but devoting most of his attention to cleaning up the mill, and declared, with a wry smile, that he never felt better in his life, but never liked talking less.

When the noon whistle shrieked its high, staccato note from the engine-house, they went up to the mess, and seated themselves at the head of the table. As a whole, the men were fairly satisfactory. Bill stared coldly down the table, and appeared to be mentally tabulating those who would draw but one pay-check, and that when their "time" was given them, but Dick's mind persisted in wandering afield to the chance encounter of the morning.

The men had finished their hasty meal, in hasty miner's fashion, silently, and tramped, with clumping feet, out of the mess-house to the shade of its northern side before Bill had ended his painful repast. Whiffs of tobacco smoke and voices came through the open windows, where the miners lounged and rested on a long bench while waiting for the whistle.

"Don't you fool yourself about Bully Presby," one of them was saying. "It's true he's a hard man, and out for the dust every minute of his life, but he's got nerve, all right. He'll bulldoze and fight and growl and gouge, but he's there in other ways. I don't like him, and we quit pretty sudden, yet I saw him do somethin' once that beat me."

"Did you work on the Rattler?" another voice queried.

"No," the other went on, "I worked for him down on the Placer Belle in California. It was under the old system and was a small mine. Kept all the dynamite on the hundred-foot level in an old chamber. Every man went there to get it when it was time to load his holes. I was startin' for mine one evenin', whistlin' along, when I smelled smoke. Stopped and sniffed, and about weakened. Knowed it was comin' from the powder room down there. It wan't more'n twenty feet from the shaft, and there was two or three tons of it in that hole. Ran back and gave the alarm bell to the engineer, then ducked my head and went toward the smoke to see if anything could be done before she blew up the whole works. On his hands and knees, with all that was left of his coat, was Bully. He'd got the fire nearly smothered out, and we coughed and spit, and drowned the rest of the sparks from the water barrel. He'd fought it to a finish all alone, and I had to drag him out to the cage that was slidin' up and down as if the engineer was on a drunk, and every time it went up I could see the boys' faces, kind of white, and worried, and hear the alarms bangin' away like mad. But he'd put the fire out there with all that stuff around him. That took some nerve, I tell you!"

"What did he do for you?" asked another voice.

The narrator gave a heavy laugh, and chuckled.

"Do for me? When he got fresh air in him again, up in the hoist, he sat up and opened his hand. In it was a candlestick and a snipe, burned on the side till the wick looked about a foot long. 'Who owns this candlestick?' says he. No one spoke, but some of us knowed it belonged to old Deacon Wells, an absent-minded old cuss, but the deacon had a family of nigh on to ten kids. So nobody answered. 'Some fool left this here,' Bully bellowed, tearing around. 'And that's what started the fire. I'll kick the man off the works that owns the stick.' Still nobody said anything. He caught me grinnin'. 'You know who it was,' says he. 'Sure I do,' says I, 'but I'm a little tongue-tied.' Then he told me he'd fire me if I didn't say who it was. 'Give me my time-check,' says I, and he gave it. He found out afterward I was the man that dragged him out, and sent a letter up to Colusa askin' me to come back, but I didn't go. Don't s'pose he'd remember me now, and don't know as I'd want him to. Any man that works for Bully comes about as near givin' away his heart's blood as any one could, and live."

The voices went rumbling on, and Dick sat thinking of the strange, powerful man of the Rattler.

"Three of the millmen know their business," mumbled Bill, as if all the time he had been mentally appraising his force. "Two are rumdums. The chips isn't bad. He could carpenter anywhere, and if he's as smart a timberman as he is millwright, will make good. The engineer that's to relieve Bells ain't so much, but I'll leave it to Bells to cuss him into line. That goes. Two of the Burley men are all right, and I fired the third in the first hour because he didn't know what was the nut and which the wrench. Smuts is a gem. He put the pigeon-blue temper on a bunch of drills as fast as any man could have done it."

Dick did not answer, but concentrated his mind on the work ahead. The whistle blew, and he compelled Bill to submit to new bandages, following the doctor's instructions, and smiled at his steady swearing as the wrappings were removed and the blisters redressed. They walked across to the hoist, entered the cage, and felt the sinking sensation as they were dropped, rather than lowered, to the six-hundred-foot level. The celerity of the descent almost robbed him of breath, but he thought of sturdy old Bells' boast, that he had "never run a cage into the sheaves, nor dropped it to the sump, in forty years of steam."

Lights glowed ahead of them, and they heard hammering. The suck of fresh air under pressure, vapored like steam, whirled around them in gusts, and the water oozed and rippled beside their feet as they went forward. The carpenter was putting in a new set of timbers, and his task was nearly finished, while beside him waited a drill man and a swamper with the cumbersome, spiderlike mechanism ready to set. The carpenter gave a few more blows to a key block, and methodically flung his hammer into his box and hurried back out through the tunnel toward the cage, intent on resuming his work at the mill.

Bill tentatively inspected the timbers, tapped the roof with a pick taken from the swamper's hands, heard the true ring of live rock, and backed away. The drill was drawn up to the green face of ore.

"About there, I should say," Dick directed, pointing an indicatory finger, and the drill runner nodded.

The swamper, who appeared to know his business, came forward with the coupling which fed compressed air to the machine, the runner gave a last inspection of his drill, turned his chuck screw, setting it against the rocky face, and signaled for the air. With a clatter like the discharge of a rapid-fire gun, the steel bit into the rock, and the Cross was really a mine again. Spattered with mud, and satisfied that the new drift was working in pay, the partner trudged back out.

They signaled for the cage, shot upward, and emerged to the yard near the blacksmith's tunnel in time to see a huge bay horse, with a woman rider, come toiling up the slope. There was something familiar about the white hat, and as she neared them they recognized The Lily. Before they could assist her to dismount, she leaped from the saddle, landing lightly on her toes, and dropped the horse's reins over his head.

"Good-day—never mind—he'll stand," she said, all in a breath, striding toward them with an extended hand.

Dick accepted it with a firm grip, and lifted his hat, while Bill merely shook hands and tried to smile. It was to him that she turned solicitously.

"I'm glad you are out," she remarked, without lowering her eyes which swept over the bandages on his face. "You're all right, are you?"

"Sure. But how's that girl? It don't matter much about an old cuss like me. Girls are a heap scarcer."

The owner of the High Light looked troubled for a moment, and removed her gloves before answering.

"Doctor Mills says she will live," she said quietly, "but she is terribly burned. She will be so disfigured that she can never work in a dance hall any more. It's pretty rough luck."

Dick recoiled and felt a chill at this hard, cold statement. The girl could never work in a dance hall any more! And this was accepted as a calamity! Accustomed as he was to the frontier, this matter-of-fact acceptance of a dance-hall occupation as something desirable impressed him with its cynicism. Not that he doubted the virtue of many of those forlorn ones who gayly tripped their feet over rough boards, and drank tea or ginger ale and filled their pockets with bar checks to make a living as best they might, but because the whole garish, rough, drink-laden, curse-begrimed atmosphere of a camp dance hall revolted him.

Mrs. Meredith had intuition, and read men as she read books, understandingly. She arose to the defense of her sex.

"Well," she said, facing him, as if he had voiced his sentiment, "what would you have? Women are what men make them, no better, no worse."

"I have made no criticism," he retorted.

"No, but you thought one," she asserted. "But, pshaw! I didn't come here to argue. I came up to tell you that the dance-hall girl will recover and has friends who will see that she doesn't starve, even if she no longer works in my place. Also, I came to see how Mister—what is your name, anyway?—is."

"Mathews, ma'am. William Mathews. My friends call me Bill. I don't allow the others to call me anything."

The temporary and threatening cloud was dissipated by the miner's rumbling laugh, and they sauntered across the yard, the bay horse looking after them, but standing as firmly as if the loosened reins were tied to a post instead of resting on the ground. A swamper, carrying a bundle of drills, trudged across the yard to the blacksmith shop, as they stood in its doorway.

"I sent you the best men I could pick up," The Lily said. "You did me a good turn, and I did my best to pay it back. That blacksmith is all right. Some of the others I know, but I don't know him. Never saw him before. You'd better watch him."

She pointed at the swamper as coolly as if he were an inanimate object, and he glared at her in return, then dropped his eyes.

"I told you I didn't run an employment agency," she went on, "but if any of these fellows get fresh, let me know, and I'll try to get you others. How does the Cross look, anyway?"

They turned away and accompanied her over the plant above ground, and heard her greet man after man on a level of comradeship, as if she were but a man among men. Her hard self-possession and competence impressed the younger man as a peculiar study. It seemed to him, as he walked beside her thoughtfully, that every womanly trait had been ground from her in the stern mills of circumstance. He had a vague desire to probe into her mind and learn whether or not there still dwelt within it the softness of her sex, but he dared not venture. He stood beside the bandaged veteran as she rode away, a graceful, independent figure.

"Is she all tiger, or part woman?" he said, turning to Mathews, whose eyes had a singularly thoughtful look.

The latter turned to him with a quick gesture, and threw up his unbandaged hand.

"My boy," he said, "she's not a half of anything. She's all tiger, or all woman! God only knows!"



CHAPTER VII

THE WOMAN UNAFRAID

They were to have another opportunity to puzzle over the character of The Lily before a week passed, when, wishing to make out a new bill of supplies, they went down to the camp. The night was fragrant with the spring of the mountains, summer elsewhere—down in the levels where other occupations than mining held rule. The camp had the same dead level of squalor in appearance, the same twisting, wriggling, reckless life in its streets.

"Fine new lot of stuff in," the trader said, pushing his goods in a brisk way. "Never been a finer lot of stuff brought into any camp than I've got here now. Canned tomatoes, canned corn, canned beans, canned meat, canned tripe, canned salmon. That's a pretty big layout, eh? And I reckon there never was no better dried prunes and dried apricots ever thrown across a mule's back than I got. Why, they taste as if you was eatin' 'em right off the bushes! And Mexican beans! Hey, look at these! Talk about beans and sowbelly, how would these do?"

He plunged his grimy hand into a sack, and lifted a handful of beans aloft to let them sift through his fingers, clattering, on those below. The partners agreed that he had everything in the world that any one could crave in the way of delicacies, and gave him their orders; then, that hour's task completed, sauntered out into the street.

Dick started toward the trail leading homeward, but Bill checked him, with a slow: "Hold on a minute."

The younger man turned back, and waited for him to speak.

"I'd kind of like to go down to the High Light for a while," the big man said awkwardly. "We ought to go round there and see Mrs. Meredith, and patronize her as far as a few soda pops, and such go, hadn't we? Seein' as how she's been right good to us."

Dick, nothing loath to a visit to The Lily, assented, although the High Light, with its camp garishness, was an old and familiar sight to any one who had passed seven years in outlying mining regions.

The proprietress was not in sight when they entered, but the bartenders greeted them in a more friendly way, and the Chinese, who seemed forever cleaning glasses, grinned them a welcome. They nodded to those they recognized, and walked back to the little railing.

"Lookin' for Lily?" the man with the bangs asked, trying to show his friendliness. "She ain't here now, but she'll be here soon. She's about due. Go on up and grab a box for yourselves. The house owes you fellers a drink, it seems to me. Can I send you up a bottle of Pumbry? The fizzy stuff's none too good for you, I guess."

He appeared disappointed when Dick told him to send up two lemonades, and turned back to lean across the bar and hail some new arrival. The partners went up and seated themselves in one of the cardboard stalls dignified by the name of boxes, and, leaning over the railing in front between the gilt-embroidered, red-denim curtains, looked down on the dancers. Two or three of their own men were there, grimly waltzing with girls who tried to appear cheerful and joyous.

Shrill laughter echoed now and then, and when the music changed a man with a voice like a megaphone shouted: "Gents! Git pardners for the square sets!" and the scene shifted into one of more regular pattern, where different individuals were more conspicuous. Some of the more hilarious cavorted, and tried clumsy shuffles on the corners when the raucous-voiced man howled: "Bala-a-ance all!" and others merely jigged up and down with stiff jerks and muscle-bound limbs, gravely, and with a desperate, earnest endeavor to enjoy themselves.

A glowering, pockmarked man, evidently seeking some one with no good intent, pulled open the curtains at the back of the box, and stared at them in half-drunken gravity; then discovering his mistake, with a clumsy "Beg pardon, gents," let the draperies drop, and passed on down the row.

Across from them, in the opposite box, some man from the placers, with his face tanned to a copper color, was hilariously surrounding himself with all the girls he could induce to become his guests, holding a box party of his own. He was leaning over the rail and bellowing so loudly that his voice could be heard above the din: "Hey, down there! You, Tim! Bring me up a bottle of the bubbly water—two bottles—five—no, send up a case. Whoop-ee! Pay on seventeen! This is where little Hank Jones celebrates! Come on up, girls. Here's where no men is wanted. It's me all by my little lonely!"

Some one threw a garland of paper flowers round his neck, which he esteemed as a high honor, and shook it out over the floor below, where all the dancers were becoming confused in an endeavor simultaneously to watch his antics, and keep their places in the dance.

"The most disgusting object in the world is a man who drinks!" came a cold voice behind them, and they turned to see The Lily standing back of them, and frowning at the scene across.

Bill turned to greet her, holding out his hand, and his broad shoulders shut out the view of Bacchanalia.

"The bartender says you drink nothing stronger than lemonade," she said, looking up at the giant, "and I am glad to hear it. It is a pleasure to meet men like you once in a while. It keeps one from losing faith in all."

She sat down in one of the chairs—a trifle wearily, Dick thought, and he noticed that there were lines under the eyebrows, melancholy, pensive, that he had not observed before in the few times they had met her. As on the occasion of their meeting at the mine, she appeared to sense his thoughts, and turned toward him as if to defend herself.

"You are asking yourself and me the question, why, if I dislike liquor, and gambling, and all this, I am owner of the High Light?" she said, reverting to her old-time hardness. "Well, it's because I want money. Does that answer you?"

"I didn't ask you a question," he retorted.

"No, but it's just like it always is with you! You looked one. I'm not sure that I like you; you look so devilish clean-minded. You always accuse me, without saying anything so that I can have a chance to answer back. It isn't fair. I don't like to be made uncomfortable. I am what I am, and can't help it."

She turned her frowning eyes on Bill, and they softened. She relented, and for the first time in the evening her rare laugh sounded softly from between her white, even teeth.

"You see," she said, addressing him, "I can't help being angry with Mr. Townsend. I think I'm a little afraid of him. I'm a coward in some ways. You're different. You just smile kindly at me, as if you were older than Methuselah, and had all the wisdom of Solomon or Socrates, and were inclined to be tolerant when you couldn't agree."

"Go on," Bill said. "You're doin' all the talkin'."

"I have a right to exercise at least one womanly prerogative, once in a while," she laughed. And then: "But I am talking more than usual. Tell me about the mine and the men? How goes it?"

They had but little to tell her, yet she seemed to find it interesting, and her eyes had the absent look of one who listens and sees distant scenes under discussion to the exclusion of all immediate surroundings.

"Have you met Bully Presby yet?" she asked.

They smiled, and told her they had.

"He is a wonderful man," she said admiringly. "He makes his way over everything and everybody. He is ruthless in going after what he wants. He fears nothing above or below. I honestly believe that if the arch demon were to block him on the trail, Bully Presby would take a chance and try to throw him over a cliff. I don't suppose he ever had a vice or a human emotion. I believe I'd like him better if he had a little of both."

Dick laughed outright, and stared at her with renewed interest. He admitted to himself that she was one of the most fascinating women he had ever met, and wondered what vicissitude could have brought such a woman, who used classical illustrations, fluent, cultivated speech, and who was strong grace exemplified, to such a position. She seemed master of her surroundings, and yet not of them, looking down with a hard and lofty scorn on the very men from whom she made her living. He began to believe what was commonly said of her, that her virtue, physical and ethical, was unassailable.

There was a crash and a loud guffaw of laughter. They pulled the curtains farther apart, and looked across at the man who was celebrating. He had dropped a bottle of wine to the floor below, and was beseeching some one to bring it up to him.

Bill leaned farther out of the box to look, and suddenly the drummer saw him, pointed in his direction with a drumstick, and spoke to a girl leaning near by. She, too, looked up, and then clapped her hands.

"There he is!" she called in her high treble voice. "Up there in number five! The man that carried Pearl out and got burned himself."

Some man near her climbed to the little stage and pointed, took off his hat, and shouted: "A tiger for that man! Now! All together! Whooee! Whooee! Whooee! Ow!"

In the wild yell that every one joined, Bill was abashed. He shrank back into the box, flushed and embarrassed, while Dick laughed outright, with boyish enjoyment at his confusion, and The Lily watched him with a soft look in her eyes, and then stared down at the floor below.

Suddenly her figure seemed to stiffen, and the look on her face altered to one of cold anger. She peered farther over as if to assure herself of something, and Dick, following her eyes, saw they were fixed on a man who stood leaning against one of the pillars near the entrance to the dance floor. He alone, apparently, was taking no part in the demonstration in Bill's honor, but glowered sullenly toward the box. It took no long reasoning for Dick to know why. The man was the one who had been the watchman at the mine when they arrived.

The band struck up again, and another dance began, the enthusiasts forgetting Bill as quickly as they had saluted him; but the ex-watchman continued to lean against the post, a picture of sullenness, and in the box The Lily stood with knitted brows, as if trying to recollect him.

"Well," she said at last, "I must go now. Come and see me whenever you can, both of you. I like you."

They arose and followed her out of the box, and down the flimsy stairs that led to the floor below. She paused on the bottom step, and clutched the casing with both hands, then tried to get a closer look at the ex-watchman, who had turned away until but a small part of his face was exposed. She walked onward, still looking angrily preoccupied, to the end of the bar, and the partners were on the point of bidding her good-night, when she abruptly started, seemed to tense herself, and exclaimed: "Now I know him!"

The partners wondered when she made a swift clutch under the end of the bar and slipped something into the bosom of her jacket. She took five or six determined steps toward the ex-watchman and tapped him on the shoulder.

He whirled sharply as if his mind had guilty fears, and faced her defiantly.

Those immediately around, suspecting something unusual, stopped to watch them, and listened.

"So you are here in Goldpan, are you, Wolff?" she demanded, with a cold sneer in her voice.

He gave her a fierce, defiant stare, and brazenly growled: "You're off. My name's not Wolff. My name's Brown."

"You lie!" she flared back, with a hard anger in her voice. "Your name is Gus Wolff! You get out of this place, and don't you ever come in again! If you do, I'll have you thrown out like a dog."

He glowered at the crowd that was forming around him, as crowds invariably form in any controversy, and then started toward the door, but he made a grave mistake. He called back a vile epithet as he went.

"Stop!" she commanded him, with an imperious, compelling tone.

He half-turned, and then shrugged his shoulders, and made as if to move on.

"Stop, I said!"

He turned again to face a pistol which she had snatched from her jacket, and now the partners, amazed, understood what that swift motion had meant. He halted irresolutely.

"You used a name toward me that I permit no man to use," she said fiercely. "So I shall explain to these men of Goldpan who you are, Gus Wolff! You were in Butte five years ago. You induced a poor, silly little fool named Rose Trevor to leave the dance hall where she worked, and go with you. You were one of those who believe that women are made to be brutalized. But good as most of them are, and bad as some of them are, there is none, living or dead, that you are or were fit to consort with. You murdered her. Don't you dare to deny it! They found her dead outside of your cabin. They arrested you, and tried you, and should have hanged you, but they couldn't get the proof of what everybody believed, that you—you brute—had killed, then thrown her over the rocks to claim that she had fallen there in the darkness."

She paused as if the tempest of her words had left her breathless, and men glared at him savagely. It seemed as if every one had crowded forward to hear her denunciation.

"Bah!" she added scornfully. "The jury was made up of fools, and men knew it. The sheriff himself told you so when he slipped you out of the jail where he had protected you, and let you loose across the border in the night. Didn't he? And he told you that if ever you came back to Butte, he would not turn a hand to keep you from the clutches of the mob; didn't he? And now you are plain 'Mister Brown,' working somewhere back up in the hills, are you? Well, Mr. Brown, you keep away from the High Light. Get out!"

Some one made a restless motion, and declared the man should be hanged, even now, but The Lily turned her angry eyes on the speaker, and silenced him.

"Not if I can help it, or any of my friends can," she said coolly. "There'll be no mobbing anybody around here. I've said enough. Let him alone, but remember what kind of a blackguard he is. That's all!"

She turned back and tossed the pistol behind the bar, and the crowd, as if her words and the advice of the more contained element prevailed, resumed its play. She looked up, and saw the partners waiting to bid her good-night, and suddenly bit her lip, as if ashamed that they had seen her fury unmasked.

"We're going now," Bill said, reaching out his hand. She did not take it, but looked around the room with unreadable eyes.

"I'll walk with you to the beginning of your trail," she said. "I'm sick of this," and led the way out into the night.

For half the length of the long street, she strode between them, wordless, and then suddenly halted and held her arms apart appealingly.

"What must you think of me?" she said, with a note of grief in her voice. "Oh, you two don't know it all! You don't know what it takes to make a woman, who tries to be decent, rebellious at everything under the skies. What brutes there are walking the earth! Sometimes, lately, I begin to doubt if there is a God!"

"And that," exclaimed the quiet, steadfast young voice at her side, "is unworthy of you and your intelligence."

She halted again, as if thinking.

"And I," said the giant, in his deep, musical tones, "know there's one. It takes more than men to make me believe there ain't. I know it when I look at them!" He waved his hands at the starlit mountains surrounding them, and towering in serenity high up to the cloudless spaces.

"I'd be mighty ashamed to doubt when I can see them," he said, "and if they went away, I'd still believe it; because if I didn't, I couldn't see no use in livin' any more. It's havin' Him lean down and whisper to you once in a while, in the night, when everything seems to be goin' wrong, 'Old boy, you did well,' that keeps it all worth while and makes a feller stiffen his back and go ahead, with his conscience clean and not carin' a cuss what anybody says or thinks, so longs as he knows that the Lord knows he did the right thing."

She faltered for a moment, and Dick, staring through the darkness at her, could not decide whether it was because the woman in her was melting after the storm of anger, or whether she was merely weighing his partner's words. As abruptly as had been any of her actions in all the time they had known her, she turned and walked away from them, her soft "Good-night" wafting itself back with a note of profound sadness and misery.

"I've decided what she is," Bill said, as they paused for a last look at the lights of the camp. "She's all woman, and a mighty good one, at that!"



CHAPTER VIII

THE INCONSISTENT BULLY

"Them beans," declared the fat cook, plaintively, "looks as if they had been put through some sort of shrivelin' process. The dried prunes are sure dry all right! Must have been put up about the time they dried them mummy things back in Egypt. Apuricots? Humph! I soaked some of 'em all day and to-night took one over to the shop and cut it open with a chisel to see if it was real leather, or only imitation. The canned salmon, and the canned tripe is all swells so that the cans is round instead of flat on the ends. I reckon you'd better go down and see that storekeeper. I dassen't! If I did I'd probably lose my temper and wallop him. If somebody don't go, the men here'll be makin' a mistake, blamin' it on me, and I can't exactly see how they could keep from hangin' me, if they want to do justice."

He had stood in the doorway of the office to voice his complaint, and now, without further words walked away toward his own particular section of the little camp village.

"So that's the way that trader down there filled the order, is it?" Dick said, frowning at his companion.

The latter merely grunted and then offered a solution.

"Probably," he said, "that stuff was sent up here without bein' opened, just as he got it. If that's so it ain't his fault. About half the rows in life come from takin' things for granted. The other half because we know too well how things did happen."

He stood up and stretched his arms.

"What do you say we go down and hear what the trader has to say? If he's square he'll make good. If he ain't—we'll make him!"

Taking it for granted that the younger man would accompany him, he was already slipping off his working shirt and peering around the corners of the room for his clean boots. Dick hesitated and had to be urged. He wondered then if it were not possible that something beside the errand to the trader's caused Bill's eagerness; but wisely kept the idea to himself.

The camp was in the dusk when they entered it, the soft dusk that falls over early summer evenings in the hills, when everything in nature seems drowsily awaiting the night. They thought there was an unusual hush in the manner of those they met. Men talked on the corners or in groups in the roadway with unaccustomed earnestness. Women leaned across window sills and chatted across intervening spaces with an air of anxiety; the very dogs in the street appeared to be subdued. At the trader's there was not the usual small gathering of loungers, squatted sociably around on cracker boxes and packing cases, and the man with the twang was alone.

"Say, there's something wrong with that stuff you sent us," Bill began, and the trader answered with a soft, absent-minded, "So?"

Bill repeated the words of the cook; but the storekeeper continued to stare out of the door as if but half of what was said proved interesting.

"I'll send up and bring it back to-morrow," he replied when the miner had concluded his complaint. "The fact is it's a job lot I bought in Portland, and I didn't look at it. Came in yesterday. I ain't—I ain't exactly feelin' right. I suppose you heard about it?"

The partners looked at him questioningly, but he did not shift his eyes from the door through which he still appeared to be staring away into the distance, and it was easy to conjecture, from the expression of his eyes, that he was seeing a tragedy.

"I'm sort of busted up," he went on, without looking at them. "You see I had a brother over there. A shift boss, he was. Him and me was more than brothers. We was friends. It don't seem right that Hiram was down there, in the dark, when the big cave came—came just as if the whole mountain wanted to smash them men under it. It don't seem right! I can't quite get it all yet. I'm goin' over there on the stage in the mornin'. He's left a widder and a couple of little shavers. I'm goin' to bring 'em here."

"We don't quite understand you," Dick said, hesitatingly, and with sympathy in his voice. "We haven't heard about it—whatever it is. I'm sorry if——"

The trader straightened up from where he had been leaning on his elbows across the counter and they saw that his face was drawn.

"Oh, I see," he said, in the same slow, hopeless voice. "I forgot you men don't come down here very often and that my driver never has anything to say to anybody. Why, it's the Blackbird mine over across the divide—on the east spur. Bad, old fashioned mine she was, with crawlin' ground. Lime streaks all through the formation and plenty of water. Nobody quite knows how it happened. There was a big slip over there a few days ago on the four-hundred-foot level. Thirty odd men back of it. Timbers went off, they say, like a gatlin' gun. I just can't seem to understand how they didn't handle that ground better. It don't look right to me!"

He stooped and twisted his fingers together and the palms of his hands gave out dry, rasping sounds. His attitude seemed inconsistent with the immobility of his face, but Dick surmised that he was trying to regain control of his emotions. He had a keen desire to know more of the particulars of the tragedy, but sensed from the storekeeper's appearance that he was scarcely able to give a coherent account of it. His words had already told his sorrow. Bill's voice broke the pause.

"We're right sorry we bothered you about the supplies," he said, softly. "But we didn't know, you see. I reckon we ain't in any big hurry. You just take your time about fixin' it up. We can live on most anything for a day or two."

The storekeeper looked at him gratefully and then lowered his eyes again. He turned away from them with a long sigh.

"Nope," he said. "Much obliged. I'll send my man up to-morrow. Business keeps a-goin' on just the same, no matter who passes out. If you or me died to-night, the whole world would just keep joggin' along. I'll send up."

They turned and walked out, feeling that anything they could say would be useless, and sound hollow, and they did not speak until they were some distance farther up the street.

"He's hard hit, poor cuss!" Bill said. "Wonder what the rest of it was. Lets go on up toward the High Light. Seems as if it must have been pretty bad. What's the commotion down there?"

Ahead of them they saw men clustering toward a central point, and others who had been in the street hurrying forward to be absorbed into the group. They quickened their steps a trifle, speculating as to whether it could mean a brawl, or something relating to the disaster of which they had just learned. It proved the latter. A man was standing in the center of the gathering crowd with the reins of a tired horse hanging loosely over his arm. He was talking to the doctor, who was asking him questions.

"No," Bill and Dick heard him say as they crowded into the group, "there ain't nothin' you can do, Doc. It's all over with 'em. I was there until quite late. God! It's awful!"

"Anybody get out at all?" someone asked.

"No. That's a cinch. You see they were driving back in and feeling for the ledge. Blocking out, I think. Pretty lean ore, over there, you know. So there was just one drift away from the shaft, and it was in that she caved."

There was a moment's silence and then a half-dozen questions asked almost in the same moment. The man turned first to one and then to another as if striving to decide which query should be answered first, and shook his head hopelessly.

"They didn't have a chance," he asserted. "It happened three days ago, as you all know. They sent over to Arrapahoe and all the boys over there went and volunteered. They worked just as many men as could get into the drift at a time, and they spelled each other in half-hour shifts, so's every man could do his best. They hadn't got in twenty feet before they saw that she was bad. Seemed as if the whole drift had been wiped out. It was as solid as rock in place—just as if the whole mountain had slipped!"

"Did you go down, Jim?" the doctor asked.

For reply the man held up his hands. Dick, close behind him and peering forward to see them in the light that came from a street lamp, saw they were a mass of blisters with the skin torn away, red and bleeding. The answer was too eloquent to require words for the man they called Jim had evidently been there and striving madly, as had others, in the attempt to rescue. There was a surge forward as the crowd pressed in, each man trying to inspect these evidences of the tragedy. The questions were coming faster and from all sides. Most frequently the anxious demand, coupled with a pronounced eagerness was, "Is there anything any of us can do? Can we help if we get over there?"

"How far over is it?" Bill asked the man nearest him.

"Forty-miles," was the answer. They were all willing to travel that far, or farther, if they could be of any assistance whatever.

"No, there's no use in going," the man in the center said. "There's more men there now than can be handled, and all they're doing is to try to get at the boys' bodies. It's sure that they can't live till they're taken out. You all know that! They're gone, every one of 'em. And that ain't the worst. They left twenty-six widows, most of 'em with children!"

A groan went up from the crowd. The word passed back along like the waves cast up by a rock thrown into the center of a pool of blackness. It began at the center with its repetition as the words were conveyed to those out of earshot. "He says there's twenty-six widows. He says there's a lot of children."

The questions were flowing inward again.

"No, boys, there ain't a thing you can do," the man they called Jim repeated. "That is, there ain't a thing can be done for the boys underground. They're gone; but somebody ought to do what can be done for them that's left. It's money that helps the most. That's the best way to show that most all of us had friends who went out."

He turned and climbed back into his saddle in the little open space, and there was another moment's silence. The crowd looked up at him now, as he sat there in the center of the light thrown downward, feebly, from the lamp.

"Give me room, boys, won't you?" he asked. "My cayuse is about all in. There ain't nothing more to tell. There ain't a thing you can do; but just what I said. Those women and children will need money. They're all broke."

The crowd slowly parted and he rode through a narrow lane where his stirrups brushed against those in the front ranks, and then the gathering began to twist backward and forward, to disintegrate, to spread itself outward and up the street of the camp. It talked in a subdued way as it went. There were but few in it who did not know and picture the meaning of all that had been imparted by the courier—the desperate alarm, the haggard, sobbing women in front of a hoist, the relays of men who were ready to descend and beat hammer on steel and tear madly at slow-yielding rock, the calls for a rest while carpenters hastily propped up tottering roofs and walls, the occasional warning shouts when men fell back to watch other huge masses of rock fall into the black drift, and the instants when some rescuer, overwrought, thought he heard sounds of "rock telegraphing" and bade the others pause and listen. There were those among the men on the street who had seen the desperate, melancholy conclusions, when hope, flaming ever more feebly, guttered out as a burned candle and died. There were those among them who had been in those black holes of despair and been rescued, to carry scars of the body for life, but recklessly forget the scars of the mind, the horrors of despair. Comparative strangers to the camp as were the two men of the Cross, they appreciated the full meaning of the blow; for doubtless there was scarcely a man around them who had not known some of those who perished in that terrible, lingering agony. Besides they were miners all.

"Pretty tough luck, isn't it?"

They found themselves confronted by the doctor, who had turned at the sound of their voices as they resumed conversation.

"We just learned of it," Dick answered, "and know scarcely anything whatever of it, save what we just heard."

The doctor shook his head.

"It has been almost the sole topic here for the last two days," he said. "We heard of it after it was too late for any of us to be of use. I started over, but got word from a confrere of mine from a camp farther east, that there were already four doctors on the spot and that I need not come unless they called for me. Even then they were hopeless. Most of the men of the Blackbird were good men, too. The kind that have families, and are steady; but I suppose from what I hear they were nearly all fellows who have been idle for some time, or have just moved into the district, so probably they had nothing much to leave in the way of support—for those left behind."

He stopped for a moment and peered at other men who were passing them.

"I think it my duty to do something in that regard," he said, quietly. "I believe I shall get Mrs. Meredith to call a meeting out in front of her place. Nearly every man of the camp goes there at some time or another, in the course of the evening. Perhaps I could—"

Again he stopped, as if thinking of the best plan.

"I see," interpolated the miner, almost as his younger companion was about to offer the same suggestion. "Let her send out word that every man in the camp is wanted. Then you give them the last news and get them to do what they can. That's right."

"It is the best way," asserted Dick, agreeing with the project. "You can do more than any one. They all respect and know you."

They left him to make his way toward the High Light and stood at the borders of little gatherings on the street, gleaning other details of the tragedy, for nearly an hour, and then were attracted by a sound below them. Men were calling to one another. Out in front of the High Light two torches flared, their flames glowing steadily in the still night air and lighting the faces of those who gathered toward them. They went with the street current and again found themselves in a crowd; but it was not so dense as that first one they had encountered. Men stood in groups, thoughtfully, with hands in pockets, their harsh, strong faces rendered soft by the light. They talked together with a quiet and sad sympathy, as if in that hour they were all of one family up there in the heart of the mountains from which they tore their hard livelihood. There was a stir from the nearest store and a voice called, "Here, Doc! Here's a couple of boxes for you to stand on so they can see you when you talk."

Men were carrying some large packing cases, or tumbling them end over end, with hollow, booming noises, to form a crude platform. The boxes clashed together. Two men holding the torches climbed up on them and they saw two others boosting the doctor upward. At sight of him there was a restraining hiss passed round through the gathering crowd, commanding silence. He waited for it to become complete.

"Men," he said, "you have all heard the news. Thirty-three of our fellows died over across the divide, or are dying now. God knows which! God grant they went quickly!"

He stopped and although not a trained orator, the pause could have been no more effective. Dick looked around him. The faces of those nearest were grave and unmoved, as if carved from the mother rock of the country in which they delved; but he saw a light in their frowning eyes that told how deeply their sympathies were stirred.

"I didn't get up here to talk to you so much about them, however," the doctor went on, quietly, "as I did to remind you that out of thirty-three of these men there were twenty-six who left widows, or widows and children behind them. The boys over there did all they could. There were a hundred and fifty men who tried to save them. They are now working merely to get their bodies. We couldn't be there to help in that; so we do what we can here. And that doing shall consist in helping out those women and children. There's a box down here in front of me. I wish you'd put what you can on it."

Bill, staring over the heads of those around him, saw a movement among those nearest the orator's stand, and into the ring of light stepped The Lily. Apparently she was speaking to the doctor, who leaned down to listen. He straightened up and called for silence.

"Mrs. Meredith," he said, "says that any man here who has no money with him can sign what he wants to give on a piece of paper, and that she will accept it as she would a pay-check and forward the cash. Then on pay-day the man can come and redeem his paper pledge."

There was a low murmur of approval swept round over the crowd which began to move forward with slow regularity. The doctor dropped down from his rostrum as if his task were done. The torches lowered as their bearers followed him and planted them beside the box on which coins, big round silver dollars and yellow gold-pieces, were falling, with here and there a scrap of paper. No one stood guard over that collection. The crowd was thinning out. Dick turned toward his friend and looked up at him to meet eyes as troubled as his own. Each understood the other.

"I wish I had some money of my own," the younger man exclaimed; "but I haven't a dollar that actually belongs to me. I am going to borrow a little from Sloan."

"I can't do that much," was the sorrowful reply. "And there ain't nothin' I'd rather do in the world than walk up there and drop a couple of hundred on that pile. I'm—I'm—"

His manner indicated that he was about to relapse into stronger terms. He suddenly whirled. A hand had been laid on his sleeve and a low, steady voice said, "Excuse me, I heard you talking and I understand. I know what you feel. I want you to permit me."

It was Mrs. Meredith who had walked around behind them unobserved and now held out her hand. They fell back, embarrassed. She appeared to fathom their position.

"I know," she said. "I wasn't eavesdropping. I saw you here. I wanted to talk to you both and so, well, I overheard. Take this, won't you? Please permit me."

Bill suddenly reached his hand out and found in his palm a roll of bills, rare in that camp. He looked at them curiously.

"There is five hundred dollars in it," she said. "That permits a reasonable gift from each of you. You can return it to me at your convenience."

Neither of them had spoken to her in all this time. Now both voiced thanks. But a moment later Dick found himself talking alone and telling her that he would send her a check within a few days to cover the amount of the loan; but she was not looking at him. He saw that her eyes were fixed on the big man by his side, who stood there looking down into her face. For some reason she appeared embarrassed by that direct scrutiny, and her eyes fell, and wandered around on those standing nearest. Suddenly she frowned, and wondering they followed the direction of her look. Not ten feet from them, standing stockily on his feet with his high, heavy shoulders squared, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his firm face unmoved, his hat shading his eyes, stood Bully Presby. He made no movement toward the goal of the contributors, and seemed to have no intention of so doing. As if to escape an unpleasant situation The Lily suddenly walked toward him.

"Good-evening, Mister Presby," she saluted, and he slowly turned his head and stared at her. He did not shift his attitude in the least, and appeared granite-like in his rigid pose.

"I suppose," she said, "that you have put something into the contribution."

"I have not," he replied with his customary incisive, harsh voice. "Why should I? The contribution means nothing to me."

The brutality, the inhumanity of his words made her recoil for an instant, and then she recovered her fearlessness and dignity.

"I might have known that," she said, coolly. "I should have expected nothing more from you. The lives of these—all these—" and she gestured toward those around—"mean nothing to you. Nor the sufferings and poverties of those dependent on them."

"Certainly not," he answered with a trace of a harsh sneer outlined on his face. "If they get killed, I am sorry. If they live, they are useful. If they are lost, others take their places. They are merely a part of the general scheme. They are for me to use."

His words were like a challenge. He watched her curiously as if awaiting her reply. Dick felt Bill starting forward, angrily, then checked him.

"Wait!" he whispered. "Let's hear what he has to say."

The Lily took a step forward to arraign him. Her face shone whiter than ever in the light of the torches.

"And that is all? That is your attitude?"

He did not answer, but stared at her curiously. It seemed to anger her more.

"I wonder," she said, "if you would care for my estimate of you! I wonder if you would care for the estimate of those around you. It does not seem strange that you are called by the fitting sobriquet of 'Bully Presby.' You are that! You are one of those shriveled souls that fatten on the toil of others—that thrive on others' misfortunes and miseries. My God! A usurer—a pawnbroker, is a prince compared to you. You are without compassion, pity, charity or grace. Your code is that of winning all, the code of greed! Listen to me. You doubtless look down on me as a camp woman, and with a certain amount of scorn! But knowing what I am, I should far rather be what I am, the owner of the High Light, a sordid den, than to be you, the owner of the Rattler, the man they call Bully Presby!"

To their astonishment he leaned his head back and laughed, deeply, from his chest, as if her anger, her scorn, her bitter denunciation, had all served to amuse him. It was as if she had flattered him by her characterizations. She was too angry to speak and stood regarding him coldly until he had finished. He turned and appeared for the first time to observe the men of the Croix d'Or scowling at him, and his laugh abruptly stopped. He scowled back at them, and, without so much as a good-night salutation turned and walked away and lost himself in the shadows of the street.

"Oh," she said, facing them and clenching her hands, "sometimes I hate that man! He is unfathomable! There have been times when I wondered if he was human."

She bit her lip as if to restrain her words, and then looked up at the partners.

"And there are times," drawled the big miner, "when I wonder how long I'll be able to keep my hands off of him. And one of those times has been in the last minute! If you think it would do any good, I'll—"

She looked up at him and smiled, for the first time since they had met. She interrupted him.

"No, the only way you can do any good is to make your contribution. I'll go with you."

They walked together toward the box which was now deserted, save by the doctor and one other, who were scooping the money into a water pail they had secured somewhere. Bill threw his roll of bills into it and the doctor looked up and smiled.

"I knew you would come," he said. "And that, with the two thousand that Mrs. Meredith has volunteered—"

She checked him.

"That was to be my secret. Please, none of you, speak of it again."

"As you wish," replied the doctor. "And I apologize. Now I would suggest that you take charge of this and take it to the High Light. I'll send it over to-morrow by Jim. The boys have done well."

That was all he said, and yet in his simple sentence was much. The camp had done well. He straightened up with an air of weariness.

"This pail is pretty heavy," he said. "Won't you take it, Mathews, and carry it over?"

The miner caught it up in his arms, fearing lest the bail break loose under its weight. The doctor bade them good night, and they started toward the High Light, leaving the torch man to extinguish his flares. She talked freely as she walked between them, expressing her relief that none of the destitute in that distant camp of mourning would suffer unduly after the receipt of Goldpan's offering. As they entered the house of the lights and noise the bartender nearest hailed her, wiped his hands on his apron and reached out an envelope.

"Bully Presby was in here about an hour or two ago," he said, "and left this. It was before you and Doc Mills was goin' out to try and get the boys interested."

She tore it open, then flushed, and passed it to the partners who together read it.

"I hear," the letter read, "that some of the men who were killed over at the Blackbird used to work for me down in California. Also that there are some women and children over there who may have a hard time of it. Will you see to it that this goes to the right channels, and regard it as confidential? I don't want to appear to be a philanthropist on even a small scale. Presby."

Pinned to the letter was a check. It was for ten thousand dollars. Bill lifted it in his fingers, scanned each word, then handed it to Mrs. Meredith who stood frowning with her eyes fixed on the floor.

"I've known burros, and other contrary cusses, in my time," he said, slowly, "but this feller Presby has 'em all lookin' as simple, and plain, and understandable, as a cross-roads guide-post."

And The Lily, contrite, agreed.



CHAPTER IX

WHERE A GIRL ADVISES

"There's one thing about you, pardner, I don't quite sabe," drawled Bill to his employer as they sat in front of their cabin one night, after discussing the assays which Dick made his especial work. "You ain't as talkative as you used to be. Somethin's on your mind. It's more'n two weeks now since I had time to think about anything but the green lead, and I'm beginnin' to notice. Where the devil do you go every mornin' between nine and eleven?"

Dick turned toward him impulsively, and then made no reply, other than to laugh softly. Then slowly he felt a wave of embarrassment.

"Not that it's any of my business, bein' as you're you and I'm me; but we were pardners for some years before things changed and made you the boss and me the hired hand. And it may be I'm undue curious. Who's that girl you go up on the pipe line to meet every mornin'?"

His question was so abrupt that, for an instant, the younger man had a hot, childish anger; but he controlled himself, and wondered why he should have been annoyed by the frank interrogation.

"Miss Presby, the lumberman's daughter," he said crisply. "But what interests me most is how you knew?"

The elder miner slapped his leg gleefully, as if pleased with a joke, and said: "Well, I went up there five or six days ago, tryin' to find you, because I'd lost the combination to the safe, and wanted to look over them old drawings. I sneaked back, because I was a little jealous to see you sittin' on the pipe talkin' right friendly to such a good-looker. Three evenin's later while you were workin' on them mill samples, I thought I'd like to see the whole of the line. I took a walk. There's been a real good horse trail worked into the ground up there, ain't there? And it's a new trail, too. Seems as if somebody must have been riding up and down that way every day for just about two weeks. And it's serious, too, because you don't say nothin' to a man you was pardners with for more'n seven years. Hey, Dick! What ails you, anyway?"

The younger man was on his feet with one of his fists drawn back, in an attitude of extreme temper.

"Suppose after this you mind your own business?"

For a full half minute the elder man sat there in the dusk, and then said slowly: "All right, boy—I mean, Mister Townsend—I will hereafter."

In the gloom his figure seemed suddenly bent forward more than usual, and his voice had a note of terrible hurt. It was as if all the ties of seven years of vicissitude had been arbitrarily cast off by his old partner; that they had become master and man. His words conveyed an indescribable sorrow, and loss.

"Bill!"

Dick's arm had relaxed, and he had stepped closer. Mathews did not lift his head. A hand, pleading, fell on his shoulder, and rested there.

"Bill, I didn't mean it! I'm—I'm—well, I'm upset. Something's happened to me. I didn't seem to realize it till just now. I'm—well, thank you, I'm making a fool of myself."

The faithful gray head lifted itself, and the gray eyes glowed warmly as they peered in the dusk at the younger man's face.

"Whe-e-w!" he whistled. "It's as bad as that, is it, boy? Just forget it, won't you? That is, forget I butted in."

Dick sat down, hating himself for such an unusual outburst. He felt foolish, and extremely young again, as if his steadfast foundations of self-reliance and repression had been proven nothing more than sand.

"I know how them things go," the slow voice, so soft as to be scarcely audible, continued. "I was young once, and it was good to be young. Not that I'm old now, because I'm not; but because when a feller is younger, there are hot hollows in his heart that he don't want anybody to know about. Only don't make me feel again that I ought to 'mister' you. I don't believe I could do that. It's pretty late to begin."

Dick went to his bed with a critical admission of the truth, and from any angle it appeared foolish. How had it all happened? He was not prone to be easy of heart. He had known the light, fleeting loves of boyhood, and could laugh at them; but they had been different to this. And it had come on him at a time when everything was at stake, and when his undivided thoughts and attention should have been centered on the Croix d'Or. He reviewed his situation, and scarcely knew why he had drifted into it, unless it had been through a desire to talk to some one who knew, as he knew, all that old life from which he had been, and would forever be, parted.

Not that he regretted its easy scramble, and its plethora of civilized concomitants; for he loved the mountains, the streams, the open forests, and the physical struggles of the wild places; but—and he gave over reasoning, and knew that it was because of the charm of Miss Presby herself, and that he wanted her, and had hoped unconsciously. Sternly arraigning himself, he knew that he had no groundwork to hope, and nothing to offer, just then; that he must first win with the Croix d'Or, and that it was his first duty to win with that, and justify the confidence of the kindly old Sloan who backed him with hard dollars.

He had not appreciated how much the daily meeting of Miss Presby meant to him until, on the following morning, and acting on his hardly reached resolution of the night before, he went up for what might be the last time. It was difficult to realize that the short summer of the altitudes was there in its splendid growth, and that it had opened before his unobserving eyes, passed from the tender green of spring to the deep-shaded depths of maturity, and that the wild flowers that carpeted the open slopes had made way for roses. Even the cross on the peak was different, and it came to him that he had not observed it in the weeks he had been climbing to the slope, but had always waited eagerly for the light of a woman's face.

She came cantering up the trail, and waved a gay hand at him as she rounded the bend of the crag. There was a frank expectancy in her face—the expectancy of a pleasant hour's visit with a good comrade. He wondered, vaguely and with new scrutiny, if that were not all—just friendliness. They talked of nothing; but his usual bantering tone was gone, and, quick to observe, she divined that there had come to him a subtle change, not without perturbation.

"You don't seem talkative to-day," she accused as he stood up, preparatory to going. "Have you finished work on your pipe line?"

He flushed slightly under the bronze of his face at the question, it being thus brought home to him that he had used it as a pretext for continuing their meetings for more than two weeks after that task was completed and the pipemen scattered—perhaps working in some subway in New York by that time.

"Yes," he said, "the work is finished. I shall not come up here again unless it is for the sole purpose of seeing you."

There was something in his tone that caused her to glance up at him and there was that in his eyes, on his face, in his bearing of restraint, that caused her to look around again, as if to escape, and hastily begin donning her gloves. She pulled the fingers, though they fitted loosely, as if she had difficulty with them—even as though they were tight gloves of kid, and said: "Well, you might do that, sometimes—when you have time; but you mustn't neglect your work. I come here because it is my favorite ride. You must not come merely to talk to me when there are other duties."

"Yes," he said, endeavoring to appear unconcerned. "The Croix d'Or is apt to be a most insistent tyrant."

"And it should come first!" He was obtuse for the instant in his worriment, and did not catch the subtle shade of bitterness in which she spoke.

She tugged at the reins of her horse, and the animal reluctantly tore loose a last mouthful of the succulent grass growing under the moisture and shadow of the big steel pipe, and stood expectantly waiting for her to mount. She was in the saddle before Dick could come around to her side to assist her. He made a last desperate compromise, finding an excuse.

"When I feel that I must see you, because you are such a good little adviser, I shall come back here," he said, "morning after morning, in the hope of seeing you and unburdening my disgruntlement."

She laughed, as if it were a joke.

"I'm afraid I'm not a very good miner," she said, "although I suppose I ought to be a yellow-legged expert, having been brought up somewhere within sound of the stamps all my life. Good luck to you. Good-by."

His reply was almost a mumble, and the black horse started down the trail. He watched her, with a sinking, hungry heart. Just as the crag was almost abreast of her mount, she turned and called back: "Oh, I forgot to say that I shall probably come here almost every day."

He did not understand, until long afterward, the effort that speech cost her; nor did he know ever that her face was suffused when her horse, startled, sprang out of sight at the touch of her spurs. He did not know, as he stood there, wishing that he had called her back, that she was riding recklessly down the road, hurt, and yet inclined to be strangely happy over that parting and all it had confessed. With a set face, as if a whole fabric of dreams had been wrenched from his life, the miner turned and walked slowly over the trail, worn by his own feet, which led him back to the Croix d'Or, and the struggle with the stubborn rock.

As he topped the hill he suddenly listened, and his steps quickened. From below a new sound had been added to the threnody of the hills; a new note, grumbling and roaring, insistent and strong. Its message was plain. The mill of the Cross was running again for the first time in years; and, even as he looked down on the red roof, the whistle in the engine-house gave a series of cheerful toots in salute of the fact.