Down on the flat in front of the long structure which held, in its batteries, almost two-score stamps, a tall figure came out, and looked around as if seeking him, and then, casting its eyes upward, beheld him, and lifted a battered hat and swung it overhead. It was Bill, rejoicing in his work.

A car of ore slid along the tramway, with the carboy dangling one leg over the back end while steadying himself by the controller, as if he had been thus occupied for years. Dick tore his hat off, threw it in the air, and shouted, and raced down the hill. From now on it must be work; unless they met with great success—then—he dared not stop to think of what then.

He hastened on down to the mill and entered the door. Everything about it, from the dumping of the cars sixty feet above, the wrench of the crushers breaking the ore into smaller fragments, the clash of the screens as it came on down to the stamps, and their terrific "jiggety-jig-jig," roared, throbbed, and trembled. Every timber in the structure seemed to keep pace with that resistless shaking as the tables slid to and fro, dripping from the water percolating at their heads, to distribute the fine silt of crushed, muddy ore evenly over the plates in the steady downward slant. Already the bright plates of copper, coated with quicksilver, were catching, retaining, amalgamating the gold.

"The venners need a little more slant, don't you think?" bellowed his partner, with his hands cupped and held close against Dick's ear in the effort to make himself heard in that pandemonium where millmen worked the shift through without attempting to speak.

In the critical calculation of the professional miner, Dick forgot all other affairs, and leaned down to see the run of water. He nodded his head, beckoned to the mill boss, and by well-known signs indicated his wish. He scrambled above and studied the pulp, slipping it through his fingers and feeling its fineness, and speculating whether or not they would be troubled with any solution of lead that would render the milling difficult and slime the plates so that the gold would escape to go roistering down the creek with waste water. It did feel very slippery, and he was reassured. He was eager to get to the assay-house and make his first assay of "tailings," refuse from the mill, to discover what percentage of gold they were saving, and, in parlance, "How she would run on mill test."

Fascinated in his inspection and direction of certain minor changes, he was astonished when the noise suddenly dropped from fortissimo to a dull whine, as the mill slowed down to a stop for the noon hour. And the afternoon passed as quickly while he worked over the bucking board—a plate used to crush ore for assaying—in the assay-house, and watched the gasoline flare and fume in his furnaces to bring the little cupels, with their mass of powdered, weighed, and numbered samples, to a molten state. He took them out with his tongs, watched them cool, and weighed, on the scales that could tell the weight of a lead pencil mark on a sheet of paper, the residue of gold, thus making his computations. He was not pleased with the result. The green lead was not as rich as they had believed.

"It won't pay more than fifty cents a ton with the best milling we can do," he said to Bill, who came eagerly into the assay office.

"But you know the old idea—that she gets richer as we go down?" his partner asserted. "If it pays fifty cents a ton at the mill plates, we'll open up the face of the ledge and put on a day and night shift. We can handle a heap of ore with this plant. It begins to look to me as if the Cross is all to the good. Come on. Let's go down to the power-house and see how things look down there when we're working."

They had been contemplating a new timber road, and, after visiting the power plant and finding it trim, and throbbing with its new life, they cut across and debouched into the public road leading up the canyon, by the banks of the stream, to the Rattler. When almost at the fork, where their own road branched off and crossed the stream to begin its steep little climb up to the Croix d'Or, they saw a man standing on the apron of the bridge, and apparently listening to the roar of their mill. His back was toward them, and seemingly he was so absorbed in the sounds of industry from above that he did not hear them approach until their feet struck the first planks leading to the heavy log structure. He turned his head slowly toward them, and they recognized him as Bully Presby. It was the first time either of them had seen him since the evening in the camp.

"So you're running, eh?" he asked Dick without any preliminary courtesy.

"Yes, we started the mill to-day."

"On ore, or waste?" There was a sneer in his question which caused Dick to stiffen a trifle; and Bill frowned, as if the question carried an insult.

Still the younger man was inclined to avoid words.

"Naturally, we shouldn't put waste through the mill," he said coldly. "We have opened up an old vein which the other managers did not seem to think worth while."

"And so, I suppose, showing superior knowledge, you will demonstrate that the men before you were a set of dubs? Humph! From babes and fools come wisdom!"

His voice was hard and cynical, and his grim lips curled with a slightly contemptuous twitch. The hot, impulsive streak in Dick leaped upward. His eyes were angry when he answered.

"If you apply the latter to me," he retorted hotly, "you are going pretty far. I don't know what business it is of yours. We have never asked you for any advice, and we don't want any. I expect no favors from any one, and if I did, am certain, in view of your attitude, that I shouldn't ask them from you."

"Steady! Steady, boy!" admonished his partner's drawling voice at his side. Dick did not utter other words that were surging to his tongue, and finished with an angry shrug of his shoulders.

Bill turned coolly to the owner of the Rattler, and appeared to probe him with his eyes; and his stare was returned with one as searching as his own.

"Who are you?" Presby asked, as if the big miner were some man he had not noticed before.

"Me? My name's Mathews. I'm superintendent of the Croix d'Or," Bill answered, as calmly as if the form of question had been ignored.

"And I suppose the young Mister Townsend relies on you for advice, and that he——"

"He don't need to rely on any one for advice," interrupted the soft, repressed voice. "I rely on him. He knows more than I do. And say," he added, taking a step toward Bully Presby, and suddenly appearing to concentrate himself with all his muscles flexed as if for action, "I've mined for thirty-five years. And I've met some miners. And I've never met one who had as little decency for the men on the next claim, or such bullying ways as you've got."

Presby's face did not change in the least, nor did he shift his eyes. There was an instant's pause, and he showed no inclination to speak.

"'Most every one around these diggings seems to be kind of buffaloed by you," Bill added; "but I sort of reckon we ain't like them. I'm handin' it to you right straight, so you and me won't have any trouble after this, because if we do—well, we'd have to find out which was the better man."

Bully Presby's eyes flashed a singular look. It seemed as if they carried something of approval, and at the same time a longing to test the question of physical superiority. And then, abruptly, he laughed. Astonished by this strange, complex character, Bill relaxed, and turned toward his partner. Dick, seeing that the interview was ended, as far as the necessity for saying anything was concerned, moved across the bridge, and Bill took a last hard stare at the mine owner. The latter laughed again, with his cold, cynical rumble.

"I think," he said, "that when the Cross shuts down for good, I'd like to give you a job. When it does, come and see me."

Without another look, word, or sign of interest, he turned his back on them, and marched up the hill toward the Rattler.



CHAPTER X

TROUBLE STALKS ABROAD

August had come, with its broiling heat at midday and its chill at night, when the snow, perpetual on the peaks, sent its cold breezes downward to the gulches below. Here and there the grass was dying. The lines on Dick's brows had become visible; and even Mathews' resolute sanguinity was being tested to the utmost. The green lead was barely paying expenses. There had come no justification for a night shift, and use of all the batteries of the mill, for the ledge of ore was gradually, but certainly, narrowing to a point where it must eventually pinch out.

Five times, in as many weeks, Dick had crossed the hill and waited for Miss Presby. Twice he had been bitterly disappointed, and three times she had cantered around to meet him. Their first meeting had been constrained. He felt that it was due to his own bald discovery that he wanted her more than anything in life, and was debarred from telling her so. In the second meeting she had been the good comrade, and interested, palpably, in the developments at the Croix d'Or.

"You should sink, I believe," she had said hesitatingly, as if with a delicate fear that she was usurping his position. "I know this district very well, indeed; and there isn't a mine along this range that has paid until it had gone the depth. Do I talk like a miner?"

She laughed, in cheerful carelessness as if his worries meant but little to her.

"You see, I've heard so much of mines and mining, although my father seldom talks of them to me, that I know the geological formation and history of this district like a real miner. I played with nothing but miners' children from the time I was so high, pigtails and pinafores, until I was this high, short skirts and frocks."

She indicated the progressive stages of her growth with her riding crop, as if seeing herself in those younger years.

"Then my father sent me to an aunt, in New York, with instructions that I was to be taught something, and to be a lady. I believe I used to eat with my knife when I first went to her home."

She leaned back and laughed until the tears welled into her eyes.

"She was a Spartan lady. She cured me of it by rapping my knuckles with the handle of a silver-plated knife. My, how it hurt! I feel it yet! I wonder that they were not enlarged by her repeated admonitions."

Dick looked at them as she held them reminiscently before her, and had an almost irresistible desire to seize and crush the long, slender, white fingers in his own. But the end of the meeting had been commonplace, and they had parted again without treading on embarrassing ground.

Dick had heard no more from the owner of the Rattler, save indirectly, nor met him since the strained passage of the bridge; but mess-house gossip, creeping through old Bells, who recognized no superiors, and calmly clumped into the owner's quarters whenever he felt inclined, said that the neighboring mine was prodigiously prosperous.

"I heard down in Goldpan," he squeaked one night, "that Wells Fargo takes out five or six bars of bullion for him every mill clean-up. And you can bet none of it ever gets away from that old stiff."

"But how does this news leak out?" Dick asked, wondering at such a tale, when millmen and miners were distinguished for keeping inviolate the secrets of the property on which they worked.

"Wells Fargo," the engineer answered. "None of the boys would say anything. He pays top wages and hires good men. Got to hand that to him. He brags there ain't no man so high-priced that he can't make money off'n him—Bully Presby does. And they ain't no better miner than him on earth. He can smell pay ore a mile underground—Bully Presby can."

The old man suddenly looked at the superintendent, and said: "Say, Bill. You been down to the camp a few times, ain't you?"

"Yes, we've been down there several times. Why?"

"Well, I suppose you know they's a lot of talk goin' around that the Cross is workin' in good pay now?"

"Oh, I've heard it; but don't pay any attention when it's not so."

Bells Park leaned farther over, and lowered his shrill, garrulous voice to a thin murmur.

"Well, I cain't tell you what it is, but I want to give you the right lead. When that gets to goin' on about newcomers in the Blue Mountains—fellers like you be—look out for storms."

"Go on! You're full of stuff again!" Bill gibed, with his hearty laugh. "If we'd listened to all the mysterious warnin's you've handed us since we came up here, Bells, we'd been like a dog chasin' his tail around when it happened to be bit off down to the rump and no place to get hold of. Better look out! Humph!"

The old engineer got up in one of his tantrums, fairly screamed with rage, threatened to leave as soon as he could get another job, and then tramped down the hill to the cabin he occupied with the other engineer. But that was not new, either, for he had made the same threat at least a half-dozen times, and yet the men from the Coeur d'Alenes knew that nothing could drive him away but dismissal.

It was but two or three days later that the partners, coming from the assay-house to the mess late, discovered a stranger talking to the men outside under the shade of a great clump of tamaracks that nestled at the foot of a slope. They passed in and sat down at their table, wondering who the visitor could be. The cook's helper, a mute, served them, and they were alone when they were attracted by a shrill, soft hiss from the window. They looked, and saw Bells Park. Nothing but his head, cap-crowned, was visible as he stood on tiptoe to reach the opening.

"I told you to look out," he said warningly. "Old Mister Trouble's come. Don't give anything. Stand pat. A walkin' delegate from Denver's here. God knows why. Look out."

His head disappeared as if it were a jack-in-the-box, shut down; and the partners paused with anxious eyes and waited for him to reappear. Dick jumped to his feet and walked across to the window. No one was in sight. He went to the farther end of the mess-house and peered through a corner of the nearest pane. Out under the tamaracks the stranger was orating, and punctuating his remarks with a finger tapping in a palm. His words were not audible; but Dick saw that he was at least receiving attention. He returned to the table, and told Bill what he had seen. The latter was perturbed.

"It looks as if we were goin' to have an argument, don't it?" he asked, voicing his perplexity.

"But about what?" Dick insisted. "We pay the union scale, and, while I don't know, I believe there isn't a man on the Cross that hasn't a card."

"Well," replied his partner, "we'll soon see. Finished?"

As they walked to the office, men began to hurry across the gulch toward the hoist, others toward the mill, and by the time they were in their cabin the whistle blew. It was but a minute later that they heard someone striding over the porch, and the man they assumed to be the walking delegate entered. He was not of the usual stamp, but appeared intent on his errand. Save for a certain air of craftiness, he was representative and intelligent. He was quietly dressed, and gave the distinct impression that he had come up from the mines, and had known a hammer and drill—a typical "hard-rock man."

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am representing the Consolidated Miners' Association."

He drew a neat card from a leather case in his pocket, and presented it, and was asked to seat himself.

"What can we do for you?" Dick asked, wasting no time on words.

"I suppose this mine is fair?"

"Yes. It is straight, as far as I know."

"It has no agreement."

"But we are ready to sign one whenever it is presented."

The delegate drew a worn wallet from his pocket, extracted a paper, and tendered it.

"I anticipated no trouble," he said, but without smiling or giving any sign of satisfaction. "Would you mind looking that over, and seeing if it meets with your approval?"

Dick stepped to the high desk at the side of the room which he had been utilizing as a drawing board, laid the sheet out, and began reading it, while Bill stood up and scanned it across his shoulders. Bill suddenly put a stubby finger on a clause, and mumbled: "That's not right."

Dick slowly read it; and, before he had completed the involved wording, the finger again clapped down at another section. "Nor that. Don't stand for it!"

"What do you want, anyhow?" Bill demanded, swinging round and facing the delegate.

The latter looked at him coolly and exasperatingly for a moment, then said: "What position do you occupy here, my man?"

Dick whirled as if he had been struck from behind.

"What position does he occupy? He is my superintendent, and my friend. Anything he objects to, or sanctions, I object to, or agree with. Anything he says, I'll back up. Now I'll let him do the talking."

The delegate calmly flicked the ash from a cigar he had lighted, puffed at it, blew the smoke from under his mustache toward the ceiling, and looked at the thin cloud before answering. It was as if he had come intent on creating a disturbance through studied insolence.

"Well," he said, without noticing the hot, antagonistic attitude of the mine owner, "what do you think of the proffered agreement?"

"I think it's no good!" answered Mathews, facing him. "It's drawn up on a number-one scale. This mine ain't in that class."

"Oh! So you've signed 'em before."

"I have. A dozen times. This mine has but one shift—the regular day shift. It has but one engineer and a helper. It has but one mill boss."

"Working eight batteries?"

"No. You know we couldn't work eight batteries with one small shift."

"Well, you've got to have an assistant millman at the union scale, you know," insisted the delegate.

"What to do? To loaf around, I suppose," Bill retorted.

"And you've got to have a turn up in the engine-house. You need another hoisting engineer," continued the delegate, as if all these matters had been decided by him beforehand.

Dick thought that he might gain a more friendly footing by taking part in the conversation himself.

"See here," he said. "The Croix d'Or isn't paying interest. Maybe we aren't using the requisite number of men as demanded under this rating; but they are all satisfied, and——"

"I don't know about that," interrupted the delegate, with an air of insolent assurance.

"And if we can't go on under the present conditions, we may as well shut down," Dick concluded.

"That's up to you," declared the delegate, with an air of disinterest. "If a mine can't pay for the working, it ought to shut down."

The partners looked at each other. There was a mutual question as to whether it would be policy to throw the delegate out of the door. Plainly they were in a predicament, for the man was master, in his way.

"Look here," Bill said, accepting the responsibility, "this ain't right. You know it ain't. We're in another class altogether. You ought to put us, at present, under——"

"It is right," belligerently asserted the delegate. "I've looked it all over. You'll agree to it, or I'll declare the Croix d'Or unfair."

He had arisen to his feet as if arbitrarily to end the argument. For a wonder, the veteran miner restrained himself, although there was a hard, glowing light in his eyes.

"We won't stand for it," he said, restraining Dick with his elbow. "When you're ready to talk on a square basis, come back, and we'll use the ink. Until then we won't. We might as well shut down, first as last, as to lose money when we're just breakin' even as it is. Think it over a while, and see if we ain't right."

"Well, you'll hear from me," declared the delegate, as he put his hat on his head and turned out of the door without any parting courtesy. "Keep the card. My name's Thompson, you know."

For a full minute after he had gone, the partners stared at each other with troubled faces.

"Oh, he's a bluff! That's all there is to it," asserted Mathews, reaching into the corner for his rubber boots, preparatory to going underground. "He knows it ain't right, just as well as I do. If he can put this over, all right. If he can't he'll give us the other rating."

He left Dick making up a time-roll, and turned down the hill; and they did not discuss it again until they were alone that night.

It was seven o'clock the next evening when the partners observed an unusual stir in the camp. They came into the mess-house to find that the men had eaten in unusually short order; and from the bench outside, usually filled at that hour with laughing loungers, there was not a sound. A strange stillness had invaded the colony of the Croix d'Or, almost ominous. Preoccupied, and each thinking over his individual trials, the partners ate their food and arose from the table. Out on the doorstep they paused to look down the canyon, now shorn of ugliness and rendered beautiful by the purple twilight. The faint haze of smoke from the banked fires, rising above the steel chimney of the boiler-house, was the only stirring, living spectacle visible; save one.

"What does that mean?" Bill drawled, as if speaking to himself.

Far below, just turning the bend of the road, Dick saw a procession of men, grouped, or walking in pairs. They disappeared before he answered.

"Looks like the boys," he said, using the term of the camps for all men employed. "I wonder where they are bound for? If it were pay night, I could understand. It would mean Goldpan, the dance halls, a fight or two, and sore heads to-morrow; but to-night—I don't know."

Bill did not answer. He seemed to be in a silent, contemplative mood when they sat in the rough easy-chairs on the porch in front of the office and looked up at the first rays of light on the splendid, rugged peak above. Dick's mind reverted to the lumberman's daughter, as does the needle veer to the magnet; and for a long time they sat there, until the fires of their cigars glowed like stars. The moon came up, and the cross was outlined, dimly, above them, and against the background of black, cast upon the somber, starlit blue of the night.

From far below, as if steel had been struck upon stone, came a faint, ringing sound. Living in that strange world of acuteness to which men of the high hills are habituated, they listened, alert. Accustomed, as are all those dwellers of the lonesome spots, to heeding anything out of the ordinary, they strained their ears for a repetition. Clattering up the roadway came the sound of a hard-ridden horse's hoofs, then his labored breathing, and a soft voice steadying him to further effort. Into the shadows was injected something moving, some unfamiliar, living shape. It turned up the hill over the trail, and plunged wearily toward them. They jumped to their feet and stepped down off the porch, advancing to meet the belated visitor. The horse, with lathering neck and distended nostrils, paused before them. The moon cleared the top of the eastern ridges with a slow bound, lowering the shadows until the sweat on the horse's neck glistened like a network of diamond dust strewn on a velvet cloak. It also lighted to a pallid gleam the still face of the night rider. It was Lily Meredith.

"I've come again," she said. "They're trying to make trouble for you, down there in the camp. Bells Park came out and told me about it. The miners' union stirred up by that man from Denver. Bells said the only chance you had was to come down there at once. They've split on your account—on account of the Croix d'Or. I've ridden two miles to warn you, and to get you there before the meeting breaks up. Bells will try and hold them until you can come and demand a hearing. If you don't make it they will scab the mine. You must hurry. It's your only chance. I know them, the best friends in peace, and devils when turned the other way."

She stopped abruptly and looked off at the moon, and then around over the dark and silent camp. Only one light was visible, that in the cook's end of the mess-house, where that fat worthy lay upon his back and read a yellow-backed, sentimental novel. Faint and rumbling came the subdued roar of the mill at the Rattler, beating out the gold for Bully Presby; and through some vague prescience Dick was aware of its noise for the first time in weeks, and it conveyed a sense of menace. Everything was at stake. Everything watched him. He looked up at the white face of The Lily above him, and in the moonlight saw that her eyes were fixed, glowing, not on him or the scenes of the night, but on the aroused giant at his side.



CHAPTER XI

BELLS' VALIANT FIGHT

"We'll get there as soon as we can," Dick said. "It may not do any good; but we'll demand a word and give them an argument. I haven't time to thank you now, Mrs. Meredith, but some day——"

"You owe me no thanks," was her rejoinder. "It is I who owe you. Turn about, you know."

The big man said nothing, but took a step nearer to her horse, and looked up into her face with his penetrating eyes. He reached up and closed his hand over both of hers, and held them for an instant, and then whirled back into the cabin to get his hat. The horse pivoted and started away.

"If I see Bells before you do," a voice floated up from the shadows below, where the moon had not yet penetrated, "I'll tell him you're coming. So long."

As the partners dog-trotted down the trail, she was already a long way in advance. Now and then, as they panted up the steep path leading away behind the Rattler, whose lights glowed dimly, they heard faint sounds telling them that she was hastening back to Goldpan. The winding of the trail took them away from the immediate roar of the stamp mill behind, and they were still in the gloom, when they saw the horse and rider outlined for a moment high above them on the crest of the divide and they thought she stopped for a moment and looked back. Then the silhouette seemed to float down out of sight, and was gone.

At the top, wordless, and sweating with effort, they filled their lungs, hitched their belts tighter, and plunged into the shadows leading toward the straggling rows of lights far below. They ran now, doggedly, hoping to arrive in the camp before the meeting came to an end.

"All we want," Bill said jerkily, as his feet pounded on the last decline, "is a chance to argue it out with the men themselves before this Denver feller gets his work in. I'm entitled to talk to 'em. I've got my own card, and am as good a union man as any of 'em. The boys'll be reasonable if they stop to think."

They hastened up the roadway of the street, which was, as at any hour of the night, filled with moving men and clamorous with sound. They knew that the miners' hall was at its farthest end over the Golden Age Saloon, and so lost no time in directing their steps toward it. A group in the roadway compelled them to turn out; and they were hurrying past, when a high, angry voice arrested them.

"And that's what they did to me—me, old Bells Park, who is sixty-four!"

Dick turned into the crowd, followed by his partner, and began forcing his way through. Bells was screaming and sobbing now in anger, and venting a tirade of oaths. "If I'd been younger they couldn't have done it so easily. If I'd 'a' had my gun, I'd 'a' killed some of 'em, I would!"

As the partners gained the little opening around him, the light from a window disclosed the white-headed, little man. Two men were half-holding him up. His face was a mass of blood, which one of his supporters was endeavoring to wipe away with a handkerchief, and from all sides came indignant, sympathetic mutterings.

"Who did that?" roared the heavy, infuriated voice of Bill as he turned to those around him.

Bells, whose eyes were swollen shut, recognized the voice, and lurched forward.

"Some fellers backin' up that Denver thug," he wailed. "I was tryin' to hold 'em till you come. He had the meetin' packed with a lot of bums I never saw before, and, when I told 'em what I thought of 'em and him, he ordered me thrown out. I tore my card to pieces and chucked 'em in his fat face, and then one of the fellers that came with him hit me. They threw me down the stairs, and might 'a' killed me if there hadn't been one or two of my friends there. They call 'emselves union miners! The dirty loafers!" And his voice screamed away again into a line of objurgations and anathemas until Bill quieted him.

"Here, Dick," he said, "give us a hand. We'll take him over to Lily's rooms and have her get Doc Mills."

His voice was unusually calm and contained. Dick had heard him use that tone but once before, when he made a proposition to a man in an Arizona camp that the road was wide, the day fine, and each well armed. He had helped bury the other man after that meeting, so now read the danger note.

"I'll go get The Lily to come up and open the door," one of Bells' supporters said; "and won't you go for Doc?" He addressed the man on the other side of the engineer.

"Sure!" replied the other.

Within five minutes they were in Mrs. Meredith's rooms again; and it seemed to Dick, as he looked around its dainty fittings, that it was forever to be a place of tragedy; for the memory of that terribly burned victim of the fire was still there, and he seemed to see her lying, scorched and unconscious, on the white counterpane.

"His nose is busted, I think," his partner said to The Lily, whose only comment was an abrupt exclamation: "What a shame! The cowards!"

He turned to the woman with his set face, and, still speaking in that calm, deadly voice, said: "Do you happen to have your gun up here?"

Her eyes opened wider, and Dick was about to interpose, when she answered understandingly: "Yes; but I'll not give it to you, Bill Mathews."

"I'm sorry," he said, as quietly as if his request or her refusal had been mere desultory conversation. "I might need one in a pinch; but if you can't spare it, I reckon the boy and me can do what we have to do without one."

He turned and walked from the room and Dick followed, hoping to argue him from that dangerous mood.

"Say, Bill," he said, "isn't it about bad enough without any more trouble?"

"What? You don't mean to say you're not with me?" exclaimed the miner, suddenly turning on him and stopping abruptly in the street. "Are you for lettin' 'em get away with it? Of course you ain't! You always stick. Come on."

They saw that the lights in the miners' hall were out, and began a steady tour of the saloons in the vicinity. One of their own men was in one of them—Smuts, the blacksmith, cursing loudly and volubly as they entered.

"Them boys has always treated us white clean through," he bawled, banging his fist on the bar, "and a lot of you pikers that don't know nothin' about the case sit around like a lot of yaps and let this Denver bunch pack the meetin' and declare a strike. Then you let the same Denver bunch jump on poor old Bells, and hammer him to a pulp after they've hustled him out of the door, instead of follerin' out to see that he don't get the worst of it. Bah! I'm dead sick of you."

The partners had paused while listening to him, and he now saw them.

"Come out here, Smuts," Dick said, turning toward the door, and the smith followed them.

"So they've ordered a strike on us, have they?" Dick asked.

"Yes," was the blacksmith's heated response; "but it don't go for me! I stick."

"Then if you're with us, where is that Denver bunch?" Bill asked; and Dick knew that any effort to deter his partner from his purpose would prove useless.

"They all went down to the High Light," the smith answered. "Have you seen Bells?"

"Yes, and taken care of him. Now I'm goin' to take care of the man that done it."

The blacksmith banged a heavy hand on the superintendent's shoulder.

"Bully for you! I'm with you. We'll go together!" he exclaimed, and at once led the way toward the flaming lights of the High Light but a few doors below.

Dick nerved himself for the inevitable, and grimly walked with them as they entered the doors. As they stood there, with the big miner in front, a sudden hush invaded the babel of noise, and men began to look in their direction. The grim, determined man in the lead, glaring here and there with cold, terrible eyes, was too noticeable a figure to escape observation. The set face of his partner, scarcely less determined, and the smith, with brawny, clenched hands, and bushy, black brows drawn into a fierce scowl, completed the picture of a desperate trio come to avenge.

"You're the man I'm after," suddenly declared Bill, pointing a finger at Thompson, of Denver, who had been the center of an admiring group. "You're the one that's responsible for old Bells. Let's see if you or any of your bunch are as brave with a younger man. Come outside, won't you?"

When first he began to speak, in that silky, soft rumble, Thompson, who was nearly as large as Mathews, assumed an air of amused disdain; but before the speech was ended his face went a little white.

"Oh, go on away, you drunken loafers!" he said, half-turning, as if to resume his conversation.

Instantly Bill sprang at him; and it seemed that he launched his sinewy bulk with a tiger's directness and deadliness straight through the ten feet intervening. He drove his fist into the face of the Denver man, and the latter swept back against those behind him. Again he lifted the merciless fist, and now began striking with both with incredible rapidity. The battered Thompson was driven back, to fall against a faro layout. The miner bent him backward over the table until he was resting on the wildly scattered gold and silver coins, and struck again, and this time the blood spurted in a stream, to run across the green cloth, the staring card symbols, and the case rack.

"Don't kill him, Bill, don't kill him!" Dick's shout arose above the shouts of men and the screams of dance-hall women. He had barely time to observe, in a flash, that Bill had picked the limp form of Thompson up, and heavy as it was, lifted it high above his head and thrown it violently into a vacant corner back of the table in a crumpled heap, when he was almost felled to the floor by a blow from behind, and turned to fight his own battle with one of the Denver bullies.

His old gymnasium training stood him in good stead; for, half-dazed by the blow, he could only reel back and block the heavy fists that were smashing toward him, when there came a sudden pause, and he saw that the smith had forced his way forward and lunged, with his heavy, slow arm, a deadly punch that landed under his assailant's ear, and sent him limp and dazed to the floor. The smith jumped forward and lifted his heavy boot to kick the weaving face; but Dick caught him by the arm, and whirled him back in time to prevent needless brutality.

"There's another of 'em that hit Bells," the smith yelled, pointing to a man who began desperately edging toward the door.

All the rage of the primitive was aroused in Dick by this time, the battle lust that dwells, placidly through life, perhaps, in every man, but which breaks loose in a torrent when once unleashed. He leaped after the retreating man, seized him by the collar, and gave a wrench that tore coat, collar, and tie from the man's throat. He drove a blow into the frightened face, and yelled: "That for old Bells Park! And that!"

The room had become a pandemonium. Men seemed striking everywhere. Fists were flying, the bartenders and gamblers shouting for order; and Dick looked back to where Smuts and Bill were clearing a wide circle as they went after individual members of Thompson's supporters who were edging in. Suddenly he saw a man leap on the bar, and recognized in him the man who had been watchman at the Croix d'Or. Even in that tempestuous instant Dick wondered at his temerity in entering the place.

Something glistened in the light, and he saw that the watchman held a drawn revolver, and was leveling it at Bill. The motion of the fight was all that prevented the shot, as Mathews leaped to and fro. A dozen men were between Dick and the watchman; but almost under his hand, at the edge of the bar, stood a whisky bottle. He dove for it, brought it up, and threw. The watchman, struck fairly on the side of the head, dropped off backward, and fell to the floor behind the bar, and his pistol exploded harmlessly upward.

Instantly there came a change. From terrific uproar the room became as still as a solitude. Brutal and deadly as had been that fierce minute or two of battle in which all men fought, or strove to protect themselves from the maddened ones nearest, the sound of the shot brought them to their senses. A fight was one thing, a shooting another. Gunmen as many of them were, they dreaded the results if firearms were resorted to in that dense mass of excited men, and each one stood still, panting, listening, calmed.

"I think Bells Park has played even," came a calm, steady voice at the door.

They turned in surprise. Standing in the doorway, motionless, scornful, and immaculate, with her white hat still on her head, as if she had just entered from the street, stood The Lily.

"Poor old Bells! Poor old man!" she said, in that panting silence, and then for what seemed a long time looked at the floor. "Bells Park," she said at last, lifting her eyes, "is dead!"

Suddenly, and before any one could speak, she clenched her hands at her sides, her eyes blazed, her face twisted, and went white.

"Oh," she said bitterly, in a voice low-pitched and tortured with passion, "I hate you! I hate you! You brutes of Goldpan. You gambling dogs! You purchasers of women. From this time, forever, I am done with you!"

She lifted her arms, opened her hands, and made one wide, sweeping, inclusive gesture, and turned and walked out into the night.

"Dead! Dead! Bells is dead!"

Dick heard an unutterably sorrowful voice exclaim; and Bill, half-denuded, his blue shirt in shreds, his face puffed from blows, and his cut knuckles dripping a slow, trickling red, plunged toward him, followed by the smith. No one blocked their way as they went, the three together, as they had come. Behind them, the room broke into hushed, awed exclamations, and began to writhe and twist, as men lifted and revived the fallen, and took stock of their injuries.

Two men came running down the street with weapons in hand; and the moonlight, which had lifted until it shone white and clear into the squalors of the camp, picked out dim blazes from the stars on their breasts. They were the town marshal and a deputy sheriff, summoned from some distant saloon by the turmoil, and hastening forward to arrest the rioters, not suspecting that men were wanted for a graver offense. Standing alone in the moonlight, in the middle of the road, with her hands clenched before her, the three men discerned another figure, and, when they gained it, saw that in the eyes of The Lily swam unshed tears.

Dick and the smith hastened onward toward her rooms; but Bill abruptly turned, after they had passed her, and spoke. They did not hear what he said. They scarcely noted his pause, for in but two or three steps he was with them again, grimly hurrying to where lay the man they had come to love.



CHAPTER XII

A DISASTROUS BLOW

In after years it all came back to Dick as a horrible nightmare of unreality, that tragic night's events and those which followed. The grim setting of the coroner's jury, where men with bestial, bruised, and discolored faces sat awkwardly or anxiously, with their hats on their knees, in a hard stillness; the grave questions of the coroner, coupled with the harsh, decisive interrogations of the prosecuting attorney, who had been hastily summoned from the county seat across the hills; and there in the other room, quiet, and at rest, the faithful old man who had given his life in defense of his friends.

Dick gave his testimony in a dulled voice that sounded strange and unfamiliar, telling all that the engineer had said of the assault. He had one rage of vindictiveness, when the three men from Denver were identified as the ones who had attacked the engineer, and regretted that they were alive to meet the charge against them. He but vaguely understood the technical phraseology of Doctor Mills when he stated that Bells Park died from the shock of the blows and kicks rained on him in that last valorous chapter of his life. He heard the decision placing the responsibility on the men from Denver, saw the sheriff and his deputies step forward and lay firm hands on their arms and lead them away; and then was aroused by the heavy entrance of the camp undertaker to make ready, for the quiet sleep, the body of Bells Park, the engineer.

"He belongs to us," said Dick numbly; "to Bill and me. He died for the Croix d'Or. The Croix d'Or will keep him forever, as it would if he had lived and we had made good."

He saw, as they trudged past the High Light, that its door was shut, and remembered, afterward, a tiny white notice pasted on the glass. The trail across the divide was of interminable length, as was that other climb up to the foot of the yellow cross on the peak, and to the grave he had caused to be dug beside that other one which Bells had guarded with jealous care, planted with flowers, weeded, and where a faded, rough little cross bore the rudely carved inscription:

A DISASTEROUS BLOW MEHITABLE PARK. THE BEST WOMAN THAT EVER LIVED.

Those who had come to pay the last honor to the little engineer filed back down the hill, and the Croix d'Or was left alone, silent and idle. The smoke of the banked fires still wove little heat spirals above the stacks as if waiting for the man of the engines. The men were shamefacedly standing around the works and arguing, and one or two had rolled their blankets and dumped them on the bench beside the mess-house.

Two or three of them halted Dick and his partner as they started up the little path to the office building where they made their home.

"Well?" Bill asked, facing them with his penetrating eyes.

"We don't want you boys to think we had any hand in any of this," the old drill runner said, taking the lead. "They jobbed us. There were but three or four of the Cross men there when they voted a strike, and before that there wasn't a man that hadn't taken the floor and fought for your scale. The meeting dragged for some reason, because old Bells kept bringing up arguments—long-winded ones—as if holding it off."

He appeared to choke up a little, and gave a swift glance over his shoulder at the yellow landmark above.

"If any of us had been there, they'd never have gotten him. We all liked Bells. But they tell me that meeting was packed by that"—and he suddenly flamed wrathful and used a foul epithet—"from Denver, and the three thugs he brought with him. Mr. Townsend, there ain't a man on the Cross that don't belong to the union. You know what that means. You know how hard it is for us to scab ourselves. But there ain't a man on the Cross that hasn't decided to stick by the mine if you want us. We're making a protest to the head officers, and if that don't go—well, we stick!"

Dick impulsively put out his hand. He could not speak. He was choking.

"Want you, boys? Want you?" Bill rumbled. "We want all of you. Every man jack on the works. You know how she's goin' as well as we do; but I'm here to tell you that if the Cross makes good, there'll be one set of men that'll always have the inside edge."

The men with the blankets grinned, and furtively flung them through an open bunk-house window. They all turned away, tongue-tied in emotion, as are nearly all men of the high hills, and tried to appear unconcerned; while Dick, still choking, led the way up the trail. The unwritten law of the mines had decreed there should be no work that day; and he saw the men of the Cross pass down the road, arguing with stolid emphasis against the injustice of the ordered strike. He knew they would return to the camp and continue that argument, with more or less heat, and wondered what the outcome would be.

He tried to forget his sorrow and bodily pains by checking over his old assay slips, while Bill wandered, like a bruised and melancholy survivor of a battle, from the mill to the hoist, from cabin to cabin, and mess-house to bunk-house, stopping now and then to stare upward at the peak, as if still thinking of that fresh and fragrant earth piled in a mound above Bells Park.

Once, in the night, they were awakened by the sounds of the men returning, as they discussed their situation and interjected copious curses for the instruments of the tragedy. Once again, later, Dick was awakened by a series of blasts, and turned restlessly in his bed, struck a match, and looked at his watch, wondering if it had all been a dream, and the morning shots of the Rattler had aroused him. It was but three o'clock, and he returned to his troubled sleep thinking that he must have been mistaken. Barely half-awake, he heard Bill climb out of his bed and don his clothing, the whistle pulled by the new hands, and the clang of hammer on steel in the blacksmith's shop. Then with a start, he was aroused from the dreamless slumber of the utterly exhausted by a heavy hand laid on his shoulder and a heavy voice: "Wake up, Dick! Wake up, boy! They've got us."

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and fumbling with the cordings of his pajamas. Bill was sitting on the edge of his bed, scowling and angry.

"Got us? Got us?" Dick repeated vaguely.

"Yes. Dynamited the Peltons, and I'm afraid that ain't all. We'll have to go up the pipe line to find out."

Dick rolled out and jumped for his clothing. He did not take time to follow his partner's kindly suggestion that he had better go to the mess-house and get the "cookie" to give him a cup of hot coffee. He was too much upset by the disaster, and walked rapidly over the trail. Not a man was in sight around the works; and as he passed the smith's door, he saw that Smuts, too, had gone, without taking time to don his cap or doff his apron. The whole force appeared to have collected around the power-house at the foot of the hill, which was around a bend and shut off from view of the Cross. A jagged rent, scattered stone and mortar, and a tangle of twisted steel told the story; but that was not the most alarming damage he had to fear, for the heavy steel pipe, where it entered the plant, was twisted loose, gaping and dry.

He scrambled up the hill, seizing the manzanita brush here and there to drag himself up faster, and gained the brow where the pipe made its last abrupt descent. Far ahead, and walking sturdily, he recognized the stalwart figure of his partner, and knew that Bill was suffering the same anxiety. He ran when the ascent was less steep, and shouted to the grizzled miner ahead, who turned and waited for him.

"I'm afraid of it," Bill called as he approached; and Dick, breathless, made no reply, but hurried ahead with him to the reservoir. In all the journey, which seemed unduly long and hot that morning, they said nothing. Once, as they passed the familiar scene of his tryst with Miss Presby, now ages past, Dick bit his lips, and suppressed a moan like that of a hurt animal. Bitterly he thought that now she was more unattainable, and his dreams more idle than ever they had been. And the first sight of the reservoir confirmed it.

To a large extent, the reservoir of the Cross was artificial. It had been constructed by throwing a deep stone and concrete dam across a narrow canyon through which there percolated, in summer, a small stream. Its cubic capacity was such, however, that when this reservoir was filled by spring freshets it contained water enough to run the full season round if sparingly used; and it was on this alone that the mill depended for its power, and the mine for its lights and train service, from hoist to breakers.

Where had stood the dam, gray with age and moss-covered, holding in check its tiny lake, was now nothing but ruins. The shots had been placed in the lower point, which was fifty feet down and conical as it struck and rested on the mother rock. Whoever had placed the charges knew well the explosive directions of his powder, and his work had been disastrously effective.

The whole lower part of the dam was out, and through it, in the night, had rushed the deluge of water so vital to the Croix d'Or. Small trees that had grown up since the dam had been built were uprooted in the bed of the canyon, and great bowlders pulled from their sockets and sent resistlessly downward. Where, the day before, had been grassy beds and heavy growths of ferns, was now but a naked bed, stripped to the rock, down which flowed a small stream oozing from what had been the reservoir.

The partners stood, as if paralyzed, on the edge of the gulch, and looked down. The catastrophe, coming on top of all that had gone before, was a death blow, stupefying, stupendous, and hopelessly irremediable.

"Well, you were right," Dick said despairingly. "They've got us at last!"

Bill nodded, without shifting his eyes from the ruin below. They stood for another minute before scrambling down the canyon's steep side to inspect more closely the way the vandalism had been effected. Slipping down the muddy bank, heedless of their clothing or bruised hands, they clambered over the broken pieces of wall, and looked upward through the great hole and into the daylight beyond. The blow was too great to permit of mere anger. It was disaster supreme, and they could find no words in that time of despondency.

"I'll give a hundred dollars toward a reward for the man who did that," shouted a voice, hoarse with indignation, above them; and they looked up to see the smith on the bank, shaking his smudged and clenched fist in the air.

"And I'll take a hundred more," growled one of the drill runners in the augmenting group behind him.

And then, as if the blow had fallen equally on all, the men of the Cross stormed and raved, and clambered over the ruins and anathematized their unknown enemy; all but one known as Jack Rogers, the boss millman, who silently, as if his business had rendered him mute as well as deaf, stood looking up and down the gulch. While the others continued their inspection of the damage, he drifted farther and farther away, intent on the ground about him, and the edge of the stream. Suddenly he stooped over and picked up something water-stained and white. He came back toward them.

"Whoever did the one job," he said tersely, "did both. Probably one man. Set the fuses at the power-house, then came on here and set these. Then he must have got away by going to the eastward."

"For heaven's sake, how do you figure that out?" Dick asked eagerly, while the others gathered closer around, with grim, inquiring faces, and leaned corded necks forward to catch the millman's words.

"I found a piece of fuse down at the power plant," he said. "See, here it is. It's a good long one. The fellow that did the job knew just how long it would take him to walk here; and he knew fuse, and he knew dynamite. The proof that he did it that way is shown by this short piece of fuse I found down there at the edge of the wash. He cut the fuse short when he shot the dam. He wanted the whole thing, both places, to go up at once. Now it's plain as a Digger Indian's trail that he didn't intend to go back the way he came, so he must have gone eastward. And if he went that way, it shows he didn't intend to hit it back toward Goldpan, but to keep on goin' over the ridge cut-off till he hit the railroad."

Dick was astonished at the persistent reasoning of the man whom hitherto he had regarded as a singularly taciturn old worker, wise in milling and nothing more.

"Now, if there's any of you boys here that know trails," he said, "come along with me, and we'll section the hillside up there and pick it up. If you don't, stay here, because I can get it in time, and don't want no one tramplin' over the ground. I was—a scout for five years, and—well, I worked in the Geronimo raid."

Dick and Bill looked at him with a new admiration, marveling that the man had never before betrayed that much of his variegated and hard career.

"You're right! I believe you're right," the superintendent exclaimed. "I can help you. So can Dick. We've lived where it came in handy sometimes."

But two other men joined them, one a white-headed old miner called Chloride and the other a stoker named Sinclair who had been at the Cross for but a few weeks, and admitted that he had been a packer in Arizona.

Slowly the men formed into a long line, and began working toward one another, examining the ground in a belt twenty feet wide and covering the upper eastward edge of the canyon. Each had his own method of trailing. The white-headed man stooped over and passed slowly from side to side. Bill walked with slow deliberation, stopping every three or four feet and scanning the ground around him with his brilliant, keen eyes. The stoker worked like a pointer dog, methodically, and examining each bush clump for broken twigs.

But it was Rogers the millman, whose method was more like Bill's, who gave the gathering call. On a patch of earth, close by the side of the rampart and where the moisture had percolated sufficiently to soften the ground, was the plain imprint of a man's foot, shod in miner's brogans, and half-soled. Nor was that all. The half-soling had evidently been home work, and the supply of pegs had been exhausted. In lieu of them, three square-headed hobnails had been driven into the center of the seam holding the patch of leather to the under part of the instep, or palm of the foot. They were off like a pack of bloodhounds, with the old millman in the lead.

Dick started to follow, and then paused. He saw that Bill was standing aside, as if hesitating what to do.

"Bill, old partner," he said wearily, "if anything can be found they can find it. I think you and I had better go back and try to think some way out of this—try to see some opening. It looks pretty black."

The big fellow took four or five of his long, swinging steps, and threw an arm over the younger man's shoulder.

"Boy," he said, "they're a-givin' us a right fast run for our money; but we ain't whipped yet—not by a long way! And if they do, well, it's a mighty big world, with mighty big mountains, and we'll strike it yet; but they haven't cleaned us out of the Cross, and can't as long as you and me are both kickin.' They've got poor old Bells. They've tried to hand us a strike. They've blown our reservoir so's we can't work the mill until another spring passes over; and yet we're still here, and the Croix d'Or is still there, off under the peak that's holdin' it down."

He waved his arm above in a broad gesture, and Dick took heart as they turned back toward the mine, calculating whether they could find a means of opening it underground to pay; whether they would need as many men as they had, and other troublesome details.



CHAPTER XIII

THE DYNAMITER

The men of the Croix d'Or slowly made their way upward toward the higher crest of the range, spread out in an impatient fan whose narrow point was made up of the three experienced men. At times the trail was almost lost in the carpet of pine needles and heavy growths of mountain grass, and again it would show plainly over long stretches where the earth was exposed. It dipped down over a crest and sought a hollow in which ran a mountain stream, spread out over a rocky bed and running swiftly. At its bank they paused. It was plain that their man had taken to the water to retard pursuit, if such came. The millman threw up his hand and called the others around him.

"Before we go any farther," he said, "let's find out how many shooting irons are in this crowd. We may need 'em."

The men looked blankly at one another, expressing by their actions the fact that in all the party there was not one who possessed a weapon.

"Then it seems to me the best thing to do is for one man to go back to the mine and get some," said Rogers, assuming leadership. "Who ever goes will find my gun hanging up at the head of my bunk in a holster. Bring that and the belt. There's cartridges in it."

One after another told where a weapon might be found, and two men volunteered to return for them. It was agreed that the others were to keep on and that after leaving the stream men were to be posted at intervals to guide the messengers as they came up. Rogers proved something of a general in the disposition of his little army, and then, with Sinclair on one bank of the stream and Chloride on the other, he plunged into the water and began an up-stream course.

"It stands to reason," he argued, "that our man didn't go down stream unless it was for a blind. He wouldn't double back because it would bring him out almost where he started. He will keep on up this way until she gets too small to travel in and then will hit off somewhere else. You other fellers keep behind."

They began a slow, painstaking course up the stream and began to fear they had been mistaken in their surmise, when Sinclair gave a shout. He had found the trail again, a telltale footprint with the patched sole. It broke upward on the other side of the canyon, and now men were posted within shouting distance of one another and left behind to notify the two men bringing weapons which way to go. Across spots where the trail was difficult or entirely lost, and still higher until the timber line was passed and bare gray rocks were everywhere, the man-hunters made their way, and another watchman was left on the highest point. Down the other side and into the timber line again, directed only by a broken twig, a freshly turned bowlder, or now and then a faint suggestion of a footprint, they plunged as rapidly as they could and then through tangled brush until suddenly they came out to an old disused path. Unerringly they picked up the footprints again, and now these indicated that the quarry had felt himself secure against pursuit and made no further attempt at concealment.

"He is heading out to the east, just as you said he would," the smith declared, as he sat down with the others to await the coming of the messengers. They were certain now that henceforth they would travel rapidly. They talked in low, angry voices among themselves, while Rogers, silent and grim, sat quietly on a bowlder and smoked. A shout from the hilltop attracted their attention and they looked up to see a group beginning to descend. The men with guns had returned and the outposts doubled back on themselves as they came, adding a man at intervals, until they joined those waiting for them. Without delay the men strung out in single file along the path, with the old millman in the lead. For the most part they went as quietly as would Indians on the war-path, loping along now and then down declivities, or panting upward when the trail climbed to higher altitudes. There was no doubt at all that the man who had dynamited the dam was certain of his having evaded all followers, and indeed he would have done so with men less trained and astute.

"Does any one know this country here?" demanded Rogers, suddenly halting his little band.

"I do," declared one of the drill runners. "I worked over here on this side one time about two years ago. Why?"

"Well, where does this trail go?"

"To an old logging camp, first, then from there there is a road leading over to Malapi."

Rogers lowered his hand from his ear and looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Many men at the camp?"

"No, I think it's been abandoned for two or three years," replied the drill runner. Rogers slapped his hand on his leg, and seemed confident again.

"Then that's where we'll find him. In that old, abandoned camp," he exclaimed. "It's a ten-to-one bet that he got some supplies up there some time within the last few days, when he made up his mind to do this job, and that he plans to lay quiet there until it is safe for him to get out of the country."

The others nodded their heads sagely.

"If you're sure of that," the drill runner said, "the best thing to do is for us to leave the trail over here a ways and come up to the old camp from behind it. He might be on the watch for this trail."

"Good again!" asserted the millman. "Here, you take the lead now and we'll follow."

For another hour they plugged along the trail with an increasing alertness, and wondering how soon the drill runner would turn off. At last he looked back and gestured to them. They understood. He slipped off the trail into the brush and began going slowly. Once he stopped to whisper to them to be cautious, inasmuch as within a few hundred yards they would reach their goal. Now they began to exercise the utmost caution of movement, spreading out according to individual judgment to avoid windfalls and thickets. Again the lead man stopped and signaled them. He beckoned with his arm, and they closed up and peered where he indicated.

Out in the center of a clearing stood a big, rambling structure that had done service and been abandoned. A slow wisp of smoke, gray and thin, floated upward from the rough chimney, a part of whose top rocks had been dislodged by winter storms. They dropped to the ground and held a whispered consultation. They argued heatedly over the best course to pursue. The millman favored surrounding the cabin, and then permitting him with two others to advance boldly to the door and endeavor to capture their man.

The packer, Sinclair, suggested another course, which was nothing less valorous than a straight rush for the doors and windows; but Chloride fought that plan.

"It ain't that I'm afraid to take my chances," he declared; "but if we do that, some of us, with such a crowd, is sure to get shot. We don't want to lose no lives on a skunk of a dynamiter like this feller must be. I'm for surroundin' the house, then callin' him out. If he's an honest man, he'll come. If he ain't, he'll fight. Then we'll get him in the long run if we have to fire the cabin to-night."

"And maybe burn a couple of million dollars worth of timber with it at the same time," growled the drill runner. "That's a fine idea! I'm for Jack's plan. First, line out around the cabin, out of sight of course, then two men walk up and get him. I'm one of 'em."

"And I the other," declared Rogers. "Let's lose no time."

Silently, as before, the party spread out until it had completed the ring around the cabin and then, when all was in readiness, the millman and the runner, with pistols loosened, stepped out into the open and walked around to the door. There was a moment's tensity as they made that march, neither they nor the watchers knowing when a shot might sound and bring one of them to the ground. The runner rapped on the door, insistently. It creaked and gave back a sodden, hollow sound, but at first there was no response. He rapped again, and at the same time tried to open it; but it was barred. A voice from inside called, "Hello! What do you want out there?"

"Want to see you," the runner answered. "Open the door, can't you?"

There was an instant's hesitation and then again the voice, "Well, what do you want? Who are you?"

"Two men that ain't familiar with these parts," was the wary reply of the runner. "Want to talk it over with you."

There was the creaking of a bar, and the door was opened cautiously. One eye applied to a crack scanned the runner, who stood there alert. Rogers was out of sight. Apparently the man in the cabin did not recognize the runner, for now he flung the door wide and stepped out. As he did so he saw the millman, whom he recognized, and swiftly pulled a gun and shot at him. Even as he did so the younger man leaped upon him, caught his wrist and wrenched the weapon from his hand. He did the unexpected thing. Instead of fighting, or attempting to regain the cabin, he deftly threw out a foot, tripped the runner against Rogers, leaped over both as they fell, and dashed headlong for the forest. Suddenly, as he gained the edge, several shots cracked viciously, but none of them seemed to have taken effect. He snarled loudly with excitement and plunged into the edge of the timber. Quite as quickly as he gained it a man arose straight in his path, leaped forward, caught him around the waist, and brought him to the ground. Men came rushing forward, almost falling over one another, but arrived too late to assist in the capture. Lying under and pinned to the earth by the huge blacksmith, struggling for release, and cursing between shut teeth, was the man who had been the watchman at the Croix d'Or when its new proprietor arrived, the man Wolff, whose past had been exposed by The Lily in the presence of some of those who were now his captors.

"Might have guessed it," growled the smith. "It's like him, anyhow."

Two others reached over and assisted him. They caught Wolff by his arms and lifted him to his feet, where they held him. Another man ran his hand over his clothes and took out a big hunting knife, sheathed. A further search revealed nothing save a small sum of money and a few dynamite caps. The prisoner attempted to brazen it out.

"What do you mean by this, anyhow?" he demanded. "Bein' held up, am I?"

No one replied to him directly, but it was Rogers who said, "Lift his feet up there until we get a look at the shoes." Unceremoniously they hoisted him clear of the ground, although in a sudden panic he kicked and struggled. There was no doubt of it. The shoes were identical with those worn by the man who had dynamited the reservoir dam. The hobnails had betrayed him. For the first time he seemed to lose courage and whined a protest.

"Where were you last night?" demanded the smith, frowning in his face.

"Right here in this cabin. Been here two days now."

They walked him between them back to the door and Chloride and Sinclair went in. They inspected it closely. They dropped to their knees and examined the deposit of dust. They walked over to the fireplace and inspected the ash surrounding the little blaze, which had been started less than an hour before, as far as they could decide. Below was a heap of mouldy ash that had been beaten down by winter snows and summer rains falling through the broken chimney. The others watched the two inquisitors curiously through the open door.

"If he has been here two days he has moved around the room scarcely at all," Sinclair declared, "because the dust isn't disturbed by more than one or two trails. And, what's more, that fire is the first one that has been built here in many a long month, and it wasn't started very long ago. It's too thin. He just got here! He's the man!"

The prisoner was ringed round by accusing, scowling eyes. He shoved a dry tongue out and wet his lips as if the nervous strain were beginning to tell. He started to speak, but apparently decided to say nothing and stood looking at the ground.

"Well," demanded Rogers, "what have you to say for yourself? You've plainly lied about being here in the cabin. What did you do that for?"

"I didn't say that I was in the cabin. I slept outside," Wolff growled.

"Then take us to the place where you camped," suggested one of the drill runners. A chorus of approving shouts seconded his request; but Wolff began to appear more confused than ever and did not answer. He took refuge in a fierce burst of anger.

"What do you fellows mean, anyhow?" he demanded. "I ain't done nothin'. What right have you to come up here and grab a man that way? Who are you lookin' for, anyhow?"

"Wolff," said the old millman, steadily, "we are looking for the man that blew up the Croix d'Or power-house and dam last night. And what's more, we think we've got him. You're the man, all right!"

His attempts to pretend ignorance and innocence were pitiful. This impromptu court was trying him there in the open beside the cabin, and he knew that its verdict would be a speedy one. He started to run the gamut of appeal, denial, and anger; but his hearers were inflexible. They silenced him at last.

"We need just one thing more, boys," said Rogers, "and that is to be sure that these are the same boots that made the tracks there by the dam. All we have to do to prove that is to take this fellow back with us. The tracks will still be there. If they are the same we can be sure."

"That's right," added the blacksmith. "That'd be proof enough. Let's move out."

They knotted their huge handkerchiefs and bound his arms at the elbows and then his hands at the wrists, and started him forward. He fought at first, but on being prodded sharply with the muzzle of a gun moved sullenly in their midst along the trail he had so lately come over. They trudged in a harsh silence, save now and then when he tried to persuade them of his innocence, only to convince them further that he lied. Their return was made much faster than their coming, for now they had no need to seek a trail, nor to walk in a mountain stream. They forged ahead rapidly under the direction of the runner who had been in that part of the mountains before, and yet it was almost dusk when they came down the hill above the great wreck. They led him to the big heap of broken masonry and then ordered him to sit down. He had to be thrown from his feet, after which they removed his shoes, and while two of them stood guard over him the others descended to the edge of the wall and found the clear-cut prints which had been first noted that morning and which, trailed, had led to his capture. They struck matches to be certain that there was no mistake and bent over while Rogers carefully pressed one of the shoes into the mud beside that first imprint. They were undoubtedly the same. He then fitted the shoe into that track, and all further proof was unnecessary. Grimly they passed back to where Wolff was being guarded.

"Well, boys," said Rogers, gravely, "this is the man! There isn't a doubt of it. Now you all know who he is, what his past has been, what he has done here, and I want to get your ideas what should be done with him."

The smith stepped forward and took off his hat. It was as if he knew that he were the one to impose a death sentence.

"There ain't but one thing for the likes of him. That's hangin'," he declared, steadily. "I vote to hang him. Here and now, across the end of the dam he shot out."

He stepped back into the closely drawn circle. Rogers faced man after man, calling the name of each. There was no dissenting voice. The verdict was unanimous. So certain had been the outcome that one of their number had started along the pipe line to the wreck of the power-house for a rope before ever they compared the imprints of the telltale shoes, and now, almost by the time they had cast their ballot, this man returned.

"Wolff, you've heard," said the old millman, with solemnity. "If you've got any messages you want sent, we'll send them. If you want time to pray, this is your chance. There's nothing you can say is going to change it. You are as good as dead. Boys, some of you get one of those beams that's tore loose there at the side, fasten the rope around the end, and shove it over the edge of the wall above the canyon there for a few feet. He shall hang above the dam he dynamited."

Wolff knew that they were in earnest. There was something more inexorable in their actions than in a court of law. At the last he showed some courage of a brute kind, reviling them all, sputtering forth his hatred, and interlarding it with a confession and threats of what he wanted to do. They silenced him by leading him to the wall and adjusting the noose. Once more Rogers besought him to pray and then, when he again burst into oaths, they thrust him off. The fall was as effective as ever hangman devised.

"In the morning, boys," said the smith, "a half-dozen of us must be up early and come back here. The hound is at least entitled to a half-way decent burial. I'll call some of you to come with me."

That was their sole comment. They had neither regrets, compunctions, nor rancor. They had finished their task according to their own ideas of justice, without hesitation.

At the Croix d'Or the partners, worried over their problems, and somewhat astonished at the non-appearance of the force, sat on the bench by the mess-house, smoking and silent.

In soft cadence they heard, as from the opposite side of the gulch, the tramping of feet. Swinging along in the dusk the men came, shadowy, unhalting, and homeward bound, like so many tired hounds returning after the day's hunt. Their march led them past the bench; but they did not look up. There was an unusual gravity in their silence, a pronounced earnestness in their attitude.

"Well," called Dick, "what did you learn?"

It was the smith who answered, but the others never halted, continuing that slow march to the bunk-house.

"We got him."

"Where is he, then?"

"Hanging to a beam across the dam he blew up," was the remorseless response.

He started as if to proceed after the others, then paused long enough to add: "It was that feller that used to be watchman here; the feller that tried to shoot Bill that night. Found him in that old, deserted cabin near the Potlach. Had the shoe on him, and at last said he did it, and was sorry for just one thing, that he didn't get all of us. Said he'd 'a' blown the bunk-house and the office up in a week more, and that he'd tried to get you two with a bowlder and had killed your burros—well, when we swung him off, he was still cursing every one and everything connected with the Croix d'Or."

He paused for an instant, then came closer, and lowered his voice.

"And that ain't all. He said just before he went off—just like this—mind you: 'I'd 'a' got Bully Presby, too, because he didn't treat me fair, after me doin' my best and a-keepin' my mouth shut about what I knew of the big lead.' Now, what in hell do you suppose he meant by that?"



CHAPTER XIV

"THOUGH LOVE SAY NAY"

"Of one thing I am sure," said Dick on the following day, when they began to readjust themselves for a decision, "and that is that if we can find work for them, there isn't a man on the works that I don't want to keep. They are too true and loyal to lose."

"We could drive into the blacksmith's tunnel," Bill said; "and I've an idea we might strike something when we pass under that hard cone just above—well, just about under where Bells is. I saw it yesterday when we were up there for the first time. That would give the millman and his gang something to do. Some of 'em can take out the rest of the green lead, and after that drift see if it comes in again. And the others that can't do anything underground, can turn to and build up the dam, with a few masons to help, and, when a new wheel comes, the millman will know how to set that all right again. So, you see, we don't have to lose any of them that has stood by us, so long as Sloan is ready to take his gamble and the hundred thousand lasts. Before that's gone, we'll just have to make good. And somehow I feel we will."

As if to add to the mental trials of the half-owner of the Croix d'Or, but another day elapsed after this decision and adjustment before he received a letter from a Seattle broker offering him a price for his interest in the mine. Thus wrote the agent:

"My client has the timber and water rights of your property in view more than anything underground, which, on the advice of experts who have visited the property in previous years, he seems to regard as worthless. He informs me that you are, to all intents, representing not only your own interest, but that of the other partner, who places implicit confidence in you. I presume that you will therefore be amenable to doing all you can to save from the wreckage of the dead property all that is possible in behalf of that partner as well as yourself, and am authorized to make you the extremely liberal offer of sixty thousand dollars for the full title to the property."

The price was ridiculously low, and Dick knew it; yet if the mine produced nothing more, and was, as the experts were supposed to have reported, worthless, the amount was extremely liberal. But for Bill he would have hesitated to decline such an offer. That worthy, however, threw his head back and roared derisively.

"Sixty thousand? Sixty thousand! What does that idiot think men who have dropped a quarter of a million in a property would quit for? Does he think that sixty thousand is any saving from a wreck like this has been? Tell him to chase himself—that the tail goes with the hide, and you'll quit clean whipped, or not at all."

But Dick was loath to refuse any offer without consulting his superior in New York, and accordingly wandered off into the hills to think. It was late in the afternoon, and he mechanically tramped over the trail to the pipe line, where, when hope ran higher, he had dared to dream.

The whole situation had become a nerve-racking tragedy of mind and action. His desperate desire for success after his self-acknowledgment that he loved Miss Presby, and then the blows that had been rained on him and the mine, the failure of the green lead to hold out when it had at least promised and justified operation—all cumulated into a disheartening climax which was testing his fortitude as it had never been tried before. He was not of those who lack either persistence, determination, or moral bravery; and it was this last characteristic, coupled with a certain maturing caution, which made him question the honesty of proceeding to lay out, perhaps, the entire hundred thousand volunteered by Sloan, with such little certainty of returns. Had the money been his own, he would have taken the chances uncomplainingly; but his judgment told him that, had he been sent to the Croix d'Or as an expert to pass an opinion on the justification of putting a hundred thousand into the ground, under present conditions, he would have advised against it.

He went as far as the reservoir. Its wreckage seemed to mock his efforts. To rebuild it alone meant big expense in a country where every barrel of cement had to be brought in on the backs of pack mules, and where stone masons received unduly high wages. The repairs to the plant would not prove so heavy; but after that? None knew better than he the trials of expensive prospecting underground, the long drives to end in nothing, the drifts that tapped no ore, the ledges that promised to come in strongly, and led the worker on with hope deferred until his purse was exhausted. The cruelty of nature itself flaunting the golden will-o'-the-wisp in the blackness of the earth.

He stood on a timber thrown carelessly on the brink of the gorge, and suddenly thought how it happened to be there, and for what tragic purpose it had served—a gallows. He shuddered, thinking of the mentally distorted wretch who had died at its end, cursing as the men of the Cross pushed him over to gasp and wrench his life away fifty feet above the ruin he had wrought. He wondered where the man had been buried, and hurried back along the pipe line to try and forget that episode.

A little flutter of white from a clump of brush attracted his eyes, and he extracted from the brambles a dainty handkerchief still fragrant with the personality of the girl he loved. He lifted it to his lips tightly, and, with a heart that was almost in pain, dropped to the line, and sat on the pipe, bent, and utterly dejected. He sat there for some minutes, and then a sound caused him to straighten himself with a jerk. The black horse was thundering down the hill as he had seen it on those other mornings when, looking backward, the "world was young."

"I saw you, Mr. Townsend," Miss Presby said as he assisted her to alight, and her voice was sympathetic and grave. "You are unhappy. I don't blame you. I have heard all about it, and—well, I have had to fight an hourly impulse to come to you ever since I heard the news. Oh, my friend, believe me, I am so sorry! So sorry!"

He could not reply, lest his voice betray the emotions aroused by her kindly sympathy. All his yearnings were fanned to flame by the cadence of her voice and the softness of her eyes. Mechanically he resumed his place on the pipe, and she seated herself by his side, half-facing him. Her slender foot, booted, braced against the ground, and almost touching his heavy miner's boot, tapped its toe on the sward as if she were impatient to find words.

"It has been a little tough," he said; "but it seems less hard to me now that I know you care."

He had blundered in his first words to the beginning of dangerous heights, and his pulses gave a wild throb when he glanced up at her and saw a light in her face, in her eyes, in her whole attitude, that he had never surprised there before. Words, unuttered, leaped hotly from his heart; a mad desire to tell of his love, of the visions he had seen in the air, on the blue of the peaks, in the cool shadows of the forests, in the black depths hundreds of feet under the ground. Of how the Croix d'Or had come to represent, not financial success, but a battle for her, and his love.

His face went white, and he bit his dry, twisting lips, and clenched his hands until they hurt.

"Not now!" he savagely commanded himself. "Not now!"

She appeared to be thinking of something she had to say, and her first words rendered him thankful that he had held his tongue, otherwise he might never have known the depths of the girl seated there by his side.

"I don't want you to think me forward," she said quietly; "but I have wanted for the last two days to ask you something. It makes it easier now that I know you know, that—that I care for it. What are your—your—how are your finances?"

She had stammered it out at last, and, now that the conversation had been led in that direction, he could speak. He sat there quietly, as if by a comrade, and told her all. Told her of his boyhood, his father's death, and that he, in his own right, had nothing in the world but youth and a half-ownership in the Croix d'Or, which threatened to prove worthless. He voiced that dread of wasting his backer's money when he had none of his own to put with it, meeting dollar for dollar as it was thrown into the crucibles of fate. He stopped at last, a little ashamed of having so completely unbosomed himself, for he was by habit and nature reticent.

"You have made it a great deal easier for me," she said, with an assumption of gayety. "I can say what I've been thinking of for two days without spludging all over my words."

She laughed as if in recollection of her previous embarrassment, and again became seriously grave, and went on:

"They say my father is a hard man. At times I have been led to believe it; but he has been a good father to me, and I appreciate it and his worries more, after a four years' absence in an Eastern school, and—well, perhaps because I am so much older now, and better able to judge leniently. I have never known much of his business from his lips. It is one subject on which he is not exactly loquacious, as probably you know."

Again she laughed a little, grim laugh. Dick had opened his lips to say that he had never met her father, when she continued:

"On the day I met you first, up here by your pipe line, the day you almost ended my bright young career by starting a half-ton bowlder down the hill—don't interrupt with repeated apologies, please—I had my birth anniversary. I was twenty-one, and—my own boss."

"Congratulations, belated, but fervent."

"Thank you; but you again interrupt. On that day when I went home, my father, in his customary gruff way, turned back just as he was going to the office where he lives at least eighteen hours out of every twenty-four, and threw in my lap a bank-book. 'Joan,' he said, 'you're of age now. That's for you. It's all yours, to do just what you dam' please with. I have nothing to do with it. If you make a fool use of it, it'll be your fault, not mine. I'm giving it to you so that if anything happened to me, or the Rattler, you'd not be helplessly busted.'"

He jumped to his feet with an exclamation.

"The Rattler! The Rattler! And—and your name is Joan and not Dorothy, and you are Bully Presby's daughter?"

He was bewildered by surprise.

"Why, yes. Certainly! Didn't you know that—all this time?"

"No!" he blurted. "There is a Dorothy Presby, and a——"

"Dorothy Presby!" She doubled over in a gust of mirth. "The daughter of the lumberman over on the other side. Oh, this is too good to keep! I must tell her the next time I see her. After all these months, you still thought——"

Again her laughter overwhelmed her; but it was not shared by Dick, who stood above her on the slope, frowning in perplexity, thinking of the strange blunder into which he had been led by the words of poor old Bells, his acceptance of her identity, his ignorance that Bully Presby had kith or kin, and of the mine owner's sarcastic references and veiled antagonism throughout all those troubled months preceding.

If she were Bully Presby's daughter, he might never gain her father's consent, though the Croix d'Or were in the list of producers. He thought of that harsh encounter on the trail, and his assertion that he was capable of attending to his own business and asked neither friendship nor favor from any man under the skies; of Bully Presby's gruff reply, and of their passing each other a second time, in the streets of Goldpan, without recognition. The girl in front of him, so unlike her father save for the firm chin and capable brow, did not appear to sense his perturbation.