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The Cross-Cut

by Courtney Ryley Cooper · English · Gutenberg #20104 · 454,915 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Cross-Cut

Author: Courtney Ryley Cooper

Illustrator: George W. Gage


        
Release date: December 13, 2006 [eBook #20104]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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THE CROSS-CUT

by

COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER

With Frontispiece by George W. Gage







[Frontispiece: Carbide pointing the way, he turned back, pushing the
tram before him.]



Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1921
Copyright, 1921,
by Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published May, 1921




TO

G. F. C.


I'VE THREATENED YOU WITH A DEDICATION

FOR A LONG TIME AND HERE IT IS!




THE CROSS-CUT


CHAPTER I

It was over.  The rambling house, with its rickety, old-fashioned
furniture--and its memories--was now deserted, except for Robert
Fairchild, and he was deserted within it, wandering from room to room,
staring at familiar objects with the unfamiliar gaze of one whose
vision suddenly has been warned by the visitation of death and the
sense of loneliness that it brings.

Loneliness, rather than grief, for it had been Robert Fairchild's
promise that he would not suffer in heart for one who had longed to go
into a peace for which he had waited, seemingly in vain.  Year after
year, Thornton Fairchild had sat in the big armchair by the windows,
watching the days grow old and fade into night, studying sunset after
sunset, voicing the vain hope that the gloaming might bring the
twilight of his own existence,--a silent man except for this, rarely
speaking of the past, never giving to the son who worked for him, cared
for him, worshiped him, the slightest inkling of what might have
happened in the dim days of the long ago to transform him into a beaten
thing, longing for the final surcease.  And when the end came, it found
him in readiness, waiting in the big armchair by the windows.  Even
now, a book lay on the frayed carpeting of the old room, where it had
fallen from relaxing fingers.  Robert Fairchild picked it up, and with
a sigh restored it to the grim, fumed oak case.  His days of petty
sacrifices that his father might while away the weary hours with
reading were over.

Memories!  They were all about him, in the grate with its blackened
coals, the old-fashioned pictures on the walls, the almost gloomy
rooms, the big chair by the window, and yet they told him nothing
except that a white-haired, patient, lovable old man was gone,--a man
whom he was wont to call "father."  And in that going, the slow
procedure of an unnatural existence had snapped for Robert Fairchild.
As he roamed about in his loneliness, he wondered what he would do now,
where he could go; to whom he could talk.  He had worked since sixteen,
and since sixteen there had been few times when he had not come home
regularly each night, to wait upon the white-haired man in the big
chair, to discern his wants instinctively, and to sit with him, often
in silence, until the old onyx clock on the mantel had clanged eleven;
it had been the same program, day, week, month and year.  And now
Robert Fairchild was as a person lost.  The ordinary pleasures of youth
had never been his; he could not turn to them with any sort of grace.
The years of servitude to a beloved master had inculcated within him
the feeling of self-impelled sacrifice; he had forgotten all thought of
personal pleasures for their sake alone.  The big chair by the window
was vacant, and it created a void which Robert Fairchild could neither
combat nor overcome.

What had been the past?  Why the silence?  Why the patient, yet
impatient wait for death?  The son did not know.  In all his memories
was only one faint picture, painted years before in babyhood: the
return of his father from some place, he knew not where, a long
conference with his mother behind closed doors, while he, in childlike
curiosity, waited without, seeking in vain to catch some explanation.
Then a sad-faced woman who cried at night when the house was still, who
faded and who died.  That was all.  The picture carried no explanation.

And now Robert Fairchild stood on the threshold of something he almost
feared to learn.  Once, on a black, stormy night, they had sat
together, father and son before the fire, silent for hours.  Then the
hand of the white-haired man had reached outward and rested for a
moment on the young man's knee.

"I wrote something to you, Boy, a day or so ago," he had said.  "That
little illness I had prompted me to do it.  I--I thought it was only
fair to you.  After I 'm gone, look in the safe.  You 'll find the
combination on a piece of paper hidden in a hole cut in that old
European history in the bookcase.  I have your promise, I know--that
you 'll not do it until after I 'm gone."

Now Thornton Fairchild was gone.  But a message had remained behind;
one which the patient lips evidently had feared to utter during life.
The heart of the son began to pound, slow and hard, as, with the memory
of that conversation, he turned toward the bookcase and unlatched the
paneled door.  A moment more and the hollowed history had given up its
trust, a bit of paper scratched with numbers.  Robert Fairchild turned
toward the stairs and the small room on the second floor which had
served as his father's bedroom.

There he hesitated before the little iron safe in the corner, summoning
the courage to unlock the doors of a dead man's past.  At last he
forced himself to his knees and to the numerals of the combination.

The safe had not been opened in years; that was evident from the
creaking of the plungers as they fell, the gummy resistance of the knob
as Fairchild turned it in accordance with the directions on the paper.
Finally, a great wrench, and the bolt was drawn grudgingly back; a
strong pull, and the safe opened.

A few old books; ledgers in sheepskin binding.  Fairchild disregarded
these for the more important things that might lie behind the little
inner door of the cabinet.  His hand went forward, and he noticed, in a
hazy sort of way, that it was trembling.  The door was unlocked; he
drew it open and crouched a moment, staring, before he reached for the
thinner of two envelopes which lay before him.  A moment later he
straightened and turned toward the light.  A crinkling of paper, a
quick-drawn sigh between clenched teeth; it was a letter; his strange,
quiet, hunted-appearing father was talking to him through the medium of
ink and paper, after death.

Closely written, hurriedly, as though to finish an irksome task in as
short a space as possible, the missive was one of several pages,--pages
which Robert Fairchild hesitated to read.  The secret--and he knew full
well that there was a secret--had been in the atmosphere about him ever
since he could remember.  Whether or not this was the solution of it,
Robert Fairchild did not know, and the natural reticence with which he
had always approached anything regarding his father's life gave him an
instinctive fear, a sense of cringing retreat from anything that might
now open the doors of mystery.  But it was before him, waiting in his
father's writing, and at last his gaze centered; he read:


My son:

Before I begin this letter to you I must ask that you take no action
whatever until you have seen my attorney--he will be yours from now on.
I have never mentioned him to you before; it was not necessary and
would only have brought you curiosity which I could not have satisfied.
But now, I am afraid, the doors must be unlocked.  I am gone.  You are
young, you have been a faithful son and you are deserving of every good
fortune that may possibly come to you.  I am praying that the years
have made a difference, and that Fortune may smile upon you as she
frowned on me.  Certainly, she can injure me no longer.  My race is
run; I am beyond earthly fortunes.

Therefore, when you have finished with this, take the deeds inclosed in
the larger envelope and go to St. Louis.  There, look up Henry F.
Beamish, attorney-at-law, in the Princess Building.  He will explain
them to you.

Beyond this, I fear, there is little that can aid you.  I cannot find
the strength, now that I face it, to tell you what you may find if you
follow the lure that the other envelope holds forth to you.

There is always the hope that Fortune may be kind to me at last, and
smile upon my memory by never letting you know why I have been the sort
of man you have known, and not the jovial, genial companion that a
father should be.  But there are certain things, my son, which defeat a
man.  It killed your mother--every day since her death I have been
haunted by that fact; my prayer is that it may not kill you,
spiritually, if not physically.  Therefore is it not better that it
remain behind a cloud until such time as Fortune may reveal it--and
hope that such a time will never come?  I think so--not for myself, for
when you read this, I shall be gone; but for you, that you may not be
handicapped by the knowledge of the thing which whitened my hair and
aged me, long before my time.

If he lives, and I am sure he does, there is one who will hurry to your
aid as soon as he knows you need him.  Accept his counsels, laugh at
his little eccentricities if you will, but follow his judgment
implicitly.  Above all, ask him no questions that he does not care to
answer--there are things that he may not deem wise to tell.  It is only
fair that he be given the right to choose his disclosures.

There is little more to say.  Beamish will attend to everything for
you--if you care to go.  Sell everything that is here; the house, the
furniture, the belongings.  It is my wish, and you will need the
capital--if you go.  The ledgers in the safe are only old accounts
which would be so much Chinese to you now.  Burn them.  There is
nothing else to be afraid of--I hope you will never find anything to
fear.  And if circumstances should arise to bring before you the story
of that which has caused me so much darkness, I have nothing to say in
self-extenuation.  I made one mistake--that of fear--and in committing
one error, I shouldered every blame.  It makes little difference now.
I am dead--and free.

My love to you, my son.  I hope that wealth and happiness await you.
Blood of my blood flows in your veins--and strange though it may sound
to you--it is the blood of an adventurer.  I can almost see you smile
at that!  An old man who sat by the window, staring out; afraid of
every knock at the door--and yet an adventurer!  But they say, once in
the blood, it never dies.  My wish is that you succeed where I
failed--and God be with you!

Your father.


For a long moment Robert Fairchild stood staring at the letter, his
heart pounding with excitement, his hands grasping the foolscap paper
as though with a desire to tear through the shield which the written
words had formed about a mysterious past and disclose that which was so
effectively hidden.  So much had the letter told--and yet so little!
Dark had been the hints of some mysterious, intangible thing, great
enough in its horror and its far-reaching consequences to cause death
for one who had known of it and a living panic for him who had
perpetrated it.  As for the man who stood now with the letter clenched
before him, there was promise of wealth, and the threat of sorrow, the
hope of happiness, yet the foreboding omen of discoveries which might
ruin the life of the reader as the existence of the writer had been
blasted,--until death had brought relief.  Of all this had the letter
told, but when Robert Fairchild read it again in the hope of something
tangible, something that might give even a clue to the reason for it
all, there was nothing.  In that super-calmness which accompanies great
agitation, Fairchild folded the paper, placed it in its envelope, then
slipped it into an inside pocket.  A few steps and he was before the
safe once more and reaching for the second envelope.

Heavy and bulky was this, filled with tax receipts, with plats and
blueprints and the reports of surveyors.  Here was an assay slip,
bearing figures and notations which Robert Fairchild could not
understand.  Here a receipt for money received, here a vari-colored map
with lines and figures and conglomerate designs which Fairchild
believed must relate in some manner to the location of a mining camp;
all were aged and worn at the edges, giving evidence of having been
carried, at some far time of the past, in a wallet.  More receipts,
more blueprints, then a legal document, sealed and stamped, and bearing
the words:


  County of Clear Creek,  )  ss.
  State of Colorado.      )

DEED PATENT.

KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS: That on this day of our Lord, February
22, 1892, Thornton W. Fairchild, having presented the necessary
affidavits and statements of assessments accomplished in accordance
with--


On it trailed in endless legal phraseology, telling in muddled,
attorney-like language, the fact that the law had been fulfilled in its
requirements, and that the claim for which Thornton Fairchild had
worked was rightfully his, forever.  A longer statement full of
figures, of diagrams and surveyor's calculations which Fairchild could
neither decipher nor understand, gave the location, the town site and
the property included within the granted rights.  It was something for
an attorney, such as Beamish, to interpret, and Fairchild reached for
the age-yellowed envelope to return the papers to their resting place.
But he checked his motion involuntarily and for a moment held the
envelope before him, staring at it with wide eyes.  Then, as though to
free by the stronger light of the window the haunting thing which faced
him, he rose and hurried across the room, to better light, only to find
it had not been imagination; the words still were before him, a
sentence written in faint, faded ink proclaiming the contents to be
"Papers relating to the Blue Poppy Mine", and written across this a
word in the bolder, harsher strokes of a man under stress of emotion, a
word which held the eyes of Robert Fairchild fixed and staring, a word
which spelled books of the past and evil threats of the future, the
single, ominous word:

"Accursed!"




CHAPTER II

One works quickly when prodded by the pique of curiosity.  And in spite
of all that omens could foretell, in spite of the dull, gloomy life
which had done its best to fashion a matter-of-fact brain for Robert
Fairchild, one sentence in that letter had found an echo, had started a
pulsating something within him that he never before had known:

"--It is the blood of an adventurer."

And it seemed that Robert Fairchild needed no more than the knowledge
to feel the tingle of it; the old house suddenly became stuffy and
prison-like as he wandered through it.  Within his pocket were two
envelopes filled with threats of the future, defying him to advance and
fight it out,--whatever _it_ might be.  Again and again pounded through
his head the fact that only a night of travel intervened between
Indianapolis and St. Louis; within twelve hours he could be in the
office of Henry Beamish.  And then--

A hurried resolution.  A hasty packing of a traveling bag and the
cashing of a check at the cigar store down on the corner.  A wakeful
night while the train clattered along upon its journey.  Then morning
and walking of streets until office hours.  At last:

"I 'm Robert Fairchild," he said, as he faced a white-haired,
Cupid-faced man in the rather dingy offices of the Princess Building.
A slow smile spread over the pudgy features of the genial appearing
attorney, and he waved a fat hand toward the office's extra chair.

"Sit down, Son," came casually.  "Need n't have announced yourself.  I
'd have known you--just like your father, Boy.  How is he?"  Then his
face suddenly sobered.  "I 'm afraid your presence is the answer.  Am I
right?"

Fairchild nodded gravely.  The old attorney slowly placed his fat hands
together, peaking the fingers, and stared out of the window to the
grimy roof and signboards of the next building.

"Perhaps it's better so," he said at last.  "We had n't seen each other
in ten years--not since I went up to Indianapolis to have my last talk
with him.  Did he get any cheerier before--he went?"

"No."

"Just the same, huh?  Always waiting?"

"Afraid of every step on the veranda, of every knock at the door."

Again the attorney stared out of the window.

"And you?"

"I?"  Fairchild leaned forward in his chair.  "I don't understand."

"Are you afraid?"

"Of what?"

The lawyer smiled.

"I don't know.  Only--" and he leaned forward--"it's just as though I
were living my younger days over this morning.  It doesn't seem any
time at all since your father was sitting just about where you are now,
and gad, Boy, how much you look like he looked that morning!  The same
gray-blue, earnest eyes, the same dark hair, the same strong shoulders,
and good, manly chin, the same build--and look of determination about
him.  The call of adventure was in his blood, and he sat there all
enthusiastic, telling me what he intended doing and asking my
advice--although he would n't have followed it if I had given it.  Back
home was a baby and the woman he loved, and out West was sudden wealth,
waiting for the right man to come along and find it.  Gad!"
White-haired old Beamish chuckled with the memory of it.  "He almost
made me throw over the law business that morning and go out adventuring
with him!  Then four years later," the tone changed suddenly, "he came
back."

"What then?"  Fairchild was on the edge of his chair.  But Beamish only
spread his hands.

"Truthfully, Boy, I don't know.  I have guessed--but I won't tell you
what.  All I know is that your father found what he was looking for and
was on the point of achieving his every dream, when something happened.
Then three men simply disappeared from the mining camp, announcing that
they had failed and were going to hunt new diggings.  That was all.
One of them was your father--"

"But you said that he 'd found--"

"Silver, running twenty ounces to the ton on an eight-inch vein which
gave evidences of being only the beginning of a bonanza!  I know,
because he had written me that, a month before."

"And he abandoned it?"

"He 'd forgotten what he had written when I saw him again.  I did n't
question him.  I did n't want to--his face told me enough to guess that
I would n't learn.  He went home then, after giving me enough money to
pay the taxes on the mine for the next twenty years, simply as his
attorney and without divulging his whereabouts.  I did it.  Eight years
or so later, I saw him in Indianapolis.  He gave me more money--enough
for eleven or twelve years--"

"And that was ten years ago?" Robert Fairchild's eyes were reminiscent.
"I remember--I was only a kid.  He sold off everything he had, except
the house."

Henry Beamish walked to his safe and fumbled there a moment, to return
at last with a few slips of paper.

"Here 's the answer," he said quietly, "the taxes are paid until 1922."

Robert Fairchild studied the receipts carefully--futilely.  They told
him nothing.  The lawyer stood looking down upon him; at last he laid a
hand on his shoulder.

"Boy," came quietly, "I know just about what you 're thinking.  I 've
spent a few hours at the same kind of a job myself, and I 've called
old Henry Beamish more kinds of a fool than you can think of for not
coming right out flat-footed and making Thornton tell me the whole
story.  But some way, when I 'd look into those eyes with the fire all
dead and ashen within them, and see the lines of an old man in his
young face, I--well, I guess I 'm too soft-hearted to make folks
suffer.  I just couldn't do it!"

"So you can tell me nothing?"

"I 'm afraid that's true--in one way.  In another I 'm a fund of
information.  To-night you and I will go to Indianapolis and probate
the will--it's simple enough; I 've had it in my safe for ten years.
After that, you become the owner of the Blue Poppy mine, to do with as
you choose."

"But--"

The old lawyer chuckled.

"Don't ask my advice, Boy.  I have n't any.  Your father told me what
to do if you decided to try your luck--and silver 's at $1.29.  It
means a lot of money for anybody who can produce pay ore--unless what
he said about the mine pinching out was true."

Again the thrill of a new thing went through Robert Fairchild's veins,
something he never had felt until twelve hours before; again the urge
for strange places, new scenes, the fire of the hunt after the hidden
wealth of silver-seamed hills.  Somewhere it lay awaiting him; nor did
he even know in what form.  Robert Fairchild's life had been a plodding
thing of books and accounts, of high desks which as yet had failed to
stoop his shoulders, of stuffy offices which had been thwarted so far
in their grip at his lung power; the long walk in the morning and the
tired trudge homeward at night to save petty carfare for a silent man's
pettier luxuries had looked after that.  But the recoil had not exerted
itself against an office-cramped brain, a dusty ledger-filled life that
suddenly felt itself crying out for the free, open country, without
hardly knowing what the term meant.  Old Beamish caught the light in
the eyes, the quick contraction of the hands, and smiled.

"You don't need to tell me, Son," he said slowly.  "I can see the
symptoms.  You 've got the fever--You 're going to work that mine.
Perhaps," and he shrugged his shoulders, "it's just as well.  But there
are certain things to remember."

"Name them."

"Ohadi is thirty-eight miles from Denver.  That's your goal.  Out
there, they 'll tell you how the mine caved in, and how Thornton
Fairchild, who had worked it, together with his two men, Harry Harkins,
a Cornishman, and 'Sissie' Larsen, a Swede, left town late one night
for Cripple Creek--and that they never came back.  That's the story
they 'll tell you.  Agree with it.  Tell them that Harkins, as far as
you know, went back to Cornwall, and that you have heard vaguely that
Larsen later followed the mining game farther out West."

"Is it the truth?"

"How do I know?  It 's good enough--people should n't ask questions.
Tell nothing more than that--and be careful of your friends.  There is
one man to watch--if he is still alive.  They call him 'Squint'
Rodaine, and he may or may not still be there.  I don't know--I 'm only
sure of the fact that your father hated him, fought him and feared him.
The mine tunnel is two miles up Kentucky Gulch and one hundred yards to
the right.  A surveyor can lead you to the very spot.  It's been
abandoned now for thirty years.  What you 'll find there is more than I
can guess.  But, Boy," and his hand clenched tight on Robert
Fairchild's shoulder, "whatever you do, whatever you run into, whatever
friends or enemies you find awaiting you, don't let that light die out
of your eyes and don't pull in that chin!  If you find a fight on your
hands, whether it's man, beast or nature, sail into it!  If you run
into things that cut your very heart out to learn--beat 'em down and
keep going!  And win!  There--that's all the advice I know.  Meet me at
the 11:10 train for Indianapolis.  Good-by."

"Good-by--I 'll be there."  Fairchild grasped the pudgy hand and left
the office.  For a moment afterward, old Henry Beamish stood thinking
and looking out over the dingy roof adjacent.  Then, somewhat absently,
he pressed the ancient electric button for his more ancient
stenographer.

"Call a messenger, please," he ordered when she entered, "I want to
send a cablegram."




CHAPTER III

Two weeks later, Robert Fairchild sat in the smoking compartment of the
Overland Limited, looking at the Rocky Mountains in the distance.  In
his pocket were a few hundred dollars; in the bank in Indianapolis a
few thousand, representing the final proceeds of the sale of everything
that had connected him with a rather dreary past.  Out before him--

The train had left Limon Junction on its last, clattering, rushing leg
of the journey across the plains, tearing on through a barren country
of tumbleweed, of sagebrush, of prairie-dog villages and jagged arroyos
toward the great, crumpled hills in the distance,--hills which meant
everything to Robert Fairchild.  Two weeks had created a metamorphosis
in what had been a plodding, matter-of-fact man with dreams which did
not extend beyond his ledgers and his gloomy home--but now a man
leaning his head against the window of a rushing train, staring ahead
toward the Rockies and the rainbow they held for him.  Back to the
place where his father had gone with dreams aglow was the son traveling
now,--back into the rumpled mountains where the blue haze hung low and
protecting as though over mysteries and treasures which awaited one man
and one alone.  Robert Fairchild momentarily had forgotten the
foreboding omens which, like murky shadows, had been cast in his path
by a beaten, will-broken father.  He only knew that he was young, that
he was strong, that he was free from the drudgery which had sought to
claim him forever; he felt only the surge of excitement that can come
with new surroundings, new country, new life.  Out there before him, as
the train rattled over culverts spanning the dry arroyos, or puffed
gingerly up the grades toward the higher levels of the plains, were the
hills, gray and brown in the foreground, blue as the blue sea farther
on, then fringing into the sun-pinked radiance of the snowy range,
forming the last barrier against a turquoise sky.  It thrilled
Fairchild, it caused his heart to tug and pull,--nor could he tell
exactly why.

Still eighty miles away, the range was sharply outlined to Fairchild,
from the ragged hump of Pikes Peak far to the south, on up to where the
gradual lowering of the mighty upheaval slid away into Wyoming.  Eighty
miles, yet they were clear with the clearness that only altitudinous
country can bring; alluring, fascinating, beckoning to him until his
being rebelled against the comparative slowness of the train, and the
minutes passed in a dragging, long-drawn-out sequence that was almost
an agony to Robert Fairchild.

Hours!  The hills came closer.  Still closer; then, when it seemed that
the train must plunge straight into them, they drew away again, as
though through some optical illusion, and brooded in the background, as
the long, transcontinental train began to bang over the frogs and
switches as it made its entrance into Denver.  Fairchild went through
the long chute and to a ticket window of the Union Station.

"When can I get a train for Ohadi?"

The ticket seller smiled.  "You can't get one."

"But the map shows that a railroad runs there--"

"Ran there, you mean," chaffed the clerk.

"The best you can do is get to Forks Creek and walk the rest of the
way.  That's a narrow-gauge line, and Clear Creek 's been on a rampage.
It took out about two hundred feet of trestle, and there won't be a
train into Ohadi for a week."

The disappointment on Fairchild's face was more than apparent, almost
boyish in its depression.  The ticket seller leaned closer to the
wicket.

"Stranger out here?"

"Very much of one."

"In a hurry to get to Ohadi?"

"Yes."

"Then you can go uptown and hire a taxi--they 've got big cars for
mountain work and there are good roads all the way.  It 'll cost
fifteen or twenty dollars.  Or--"

Fairchild smiled.  "Give me the other system if you 've got one.  I 'm
not terribly long on cash--for taxis."

"Certainly.  I was just going to tell you about it.  No use spending
that money if you 've got a little pep, and it is n't a matter of life
or death.  Go up to the Central Loop--anybody can direct you--and catch
a street car for Golden.  That eats up fifteen miles and leaves just
twenty-three miles more.  Then ask somebody to point out the road over
Mount Lookout.  Machines go along there every few minutes--no trouble
at all to catch a ride.  You 'll be in Ohadi in no time."

Fairchild obeyed the instructions, and in the baggage room rechecked
his trunk to follow him, lightening his traveling bag at the same time
until it carried only necessities.  A luncheon, then the street car.
Three quarters of an hour later, he began the five-mile trudge up the
broad, smooth, carefully groomed automobile highway which masters Mount
Lookout.  A rumbling sound behind him, then as he stepped to one side,
a grimy truck driver leaned out to shout as he passed:

"Want a lift?  Hop on!  Can't stop--too much grade."

A running leap, and Fairchild seated himself on the tailboard of the
truck, swinging his legs and looking out over the fading plains as the
truck roared and clattered upward along the twisting mountain road.

Higher, higher, while the truck labored along the grade, and while the
buildings in Golden below shrank smaller and smaller.  The reservoir
lake in the center of the town, a broad expanse of water only a short
time before, began to take on the appearance of some great, blue-white
diamond glistening in the sun.  Gradually a stream outlined itself in
living topography upon a map which seemed as large as the world itself.
Denver, fifteen miles away, came into view, its streets showing like
seams in a well-sewn garment, the sun, even at this distance, striking
a sheen from the golden dome of the capitol building.  Higher!  The
chortling truck gasped at the curves and tugged on the straightaway,
but Robert Fairchild had ceased to hear.  His every attention was
centered on the tremendous stage unfolded before him, the vast
stretches of the plains rolling away beneath, even into Kansas and
Wyoming and Nebraska, hundreds of miles away, plains where once the
buffalo had roamed in great, shaggy herds, where once the emigrant
trains had made their slow, rocking progress into a Land of Heart's
Desire; and he began to understand something of the vastness of life,
the great scope of ambition; new things to a man whose world, until two
weeks before, had been the four chalky walls of an office.

Cool breezes from pine-fringed gulches brushed his cheek and smoothed
away the burning touch of a glaring sun; the truck turned into the
hairpin curves of the steep ascent, giving him a glimpse of deep
valleys, green from the touch of flowing streams, of great clefts with
their vari-hued splotches of granite, and on beyond, mound after mound
of pine-clothed hills, fringing the peaks of eternal snow, far away.
The blood suddenly grew hot in Fairchild's veins; he whistled, he
repressed a wild, spasmodic desire to shout.  The spirit that had been
the spirit of the determined men of the emigrant trains was his now; he
remembered that he was traveling slowly toward a fight--against whom,
or what, he knew not--but he welcomed it just the same.  The exaltation
of rarefied atmosphere was in his brain; dingy offices were gone
forever.  He was free; and for the first time in his life, he
appreciated the meaning of the word.

Upward, still upward!  The town below became merely a checkerboard
thing, the lake a dot of gleaming silver, the stream a scintillating
ribbon stretching off into the foothills.  A turn, and they skirted a
tremendous valley, its slopes falling away in sheer descents from the
roadway.  A darkened, moist stretch of road, fringed by pines, then a
jogging journey over rolling table-land.  At last came a voice from the
driver's seat, and Fairchild turned like a man suddenly awakened.

"Turn off up here at Genesee Mountain.  Which way do you go?"

"Trying to get to Ohadi."  Fairchild shouted it above the roar of the
engine.  The driver waved a hand forward.

"Keep to the main road.  Drop off when I make the turn.  You 'll pick
up another ride soon.  Plenty of chances."

"Thanks for the lift."

"Aw, forget it."

The truck wheeled from the main road and chugged away, leaving
Fairchild afoot, making as much progress as possible toward his goal
until good fortune should bring a swifter means of locomotion.  A
half-mile he walked, studying the constant changes of the scenery
before him, the slopes and rises, the smooth valleys and jagged crags
above, the clouds as they drifted low upon the higher peaks, shielding
them from view for a moment, then disappearing.  Then suddenly he
wheeled.  Behind him sounded the swift droning of a motor, cut-out
open, as it rushed forward along the road,--and the noise told a story
of speed.

Far at the brow of a steep hill it appeared, seeming to hang in space
for an instant before leaping downward.  Rushing, plunging, once
skidding dangerously at a small curve, it made the descent, bumped over
a bridge, was lost for a second in the pines, then sped toward him, a
big touring car, with a small, resolute figure clinging to the wheel.
The quarter of a mile changed to a furlong, the furlong to a hundred
yards,--then, with a report like a revolver shot, the machine suddenly
slewed in drunken fashion far to one side of the road, hung dangerously
over the steep cliff an instant, righted itself, swayed forward and
stopped, barely twenty-five yards away.  Staring, Robert Fairchild saw
that a small, trim figure had leaped forth and was waving excitedly to
him, and he ran forward.

His first glance had proclaimed it a boy; the second had told a
different story.  A girl--dressed in far different fashion from Robert
Fairchild's limited specifications of feminine garb--she caused him to
gasp in surprise, then to stop and stare.  Again she waved a hand and
stamped a foot excitedly; a vehement little thing in a snug, whipcord
riding habit and a checkered cap pulled tight over closely braided
hair, she awaited him with all the impatience of impetuous womanhood.

"For goodness' sake, come here!" she called, as he still stood gaping.
"I 'll give you five dollars.  Hurry!"

Fairchild managed to voice the fact that he would be willing to help
without remuneration, as he hurried forward, still staring at her, a
vibrant little thing with dark-brown wisps of hair which had been blown
from beneath her cap straying about equally dark-brown, snapping eyes
and caressing the corners of tightly pressed, momentarily impatient
lips.  Only a second she hesitated, then dived for the tonneau, jerking
with all her strength at the heavy seat cushion, as he stepped to the
running board beside her.

"Can't get this dinged thing up!" she panted.  "Always sticks when you
're in a hurry.  That's it!  Jerk it.  Thanks!  Here!"  She reached
forward and a small, sun-tanned hand grasped a greasy jack, "Slide
under the back axle and put this jack in place, will you?  And rush it!
I 've got to change a tire in nothing flat!  Hurry!"

Fairchild, almost before he knew it, found himself under the rear of
the car, fussing with a refractory lifting jack and trying to keep his
eyes from the view of trimly clad, brown-shod little feet, as they
pattered about at the side of the car, hurried to the running board,
then stopped as wrenches and a hammer clattered to the ground.  Then
one shoe was raised, to press tight against a wheel; metal touched
metal, a feminine gasp sounded as strength was exerted in vain, then
eddying dust as the foot stamped, accompanied by an exasperated
ejaculation.

"Ding these old lugs!  They 're rusted!  Got that jack in place yet?"

"Yes!  I'm raising the car now."

"Oh, please hurry."  There was pleading in the tone now.  "Please!"

The car creaked upward.  Out came Fairchild, brushing the dust from his
clothes.  But already the girl was pressing the lug wrench into his
hands.

"Don't mind that dirt," came her exclamation.  "I 'll--I 'll give you
some extra money to get your suit cleaned.  Loosen those lugs, while I
get the spare tire off the back.  And for goodness' sake, please hurry!"

Astonishment had taken away speech for Fairchild.  He could only
wonder--and obey.  Swiftly he twirled the wrench while lug after lug
fell to the ground, and while the girl, struggling with a tire
seemingly almost as big as herself, trundled the spare into position to
await the transfer.  As for Fairchild, he was in the midst of a task
which he had seen performed far more times than he had done it himself.
He strove to remove the blown-out shoe with the cap still screwed on
the valve stem; he fussed and swore under his breath, and panted, while
behind him a girl in whipcord riding habit and close-pulled cap
fidgeted first on one tan-clad foot, then on the other, anxiously
watching the road behind her and calling constantly for speed.

At last the job was finished, the girl fastening the useless shoe
behind the machine while Fairchild tightened the last of the lugs.
Then as he straightened, a small figure shot to his side, took the
wrench from his hand and sent it, with the other tools, clattering into
the tonneau.  A tiny hand went into a pocket, something that crinkled
was shoved into the man's grasp, and while he stood there gasping, she
leaped to the driver's seat, slammed the door, spun the starter until
it whined, and with open cutout roaring again, was off and away,
rocking down the mountain side, around a curve and out of sight--while
Fairchild merely stood there, staring wonderingly at a ten-dollar bill!

A noise from the rear, growing louder, and the amazed man turned to see
a second machine, filled with men, careening toward him.  Fifty feet
away the brakes creaked, and the big automobile came to a skidding,
dust-throwing stop.  A sun-browned man in a Stetson hat, metal badge
gleaming from beneath his coat, leaned forth.

"Which way did he go?"

"He?"  Robert Fairchild stared.

"Yeh.  Did n't a man just pass here in an automobile?  Where'd he
go--straight on the main road or off on the circuit trail?"

"It--it was n't a man."

"Not a man?"  The four occupants of the machine stared at him.  "Don't
try to bull us that it was a woman."

"Oh, no--no--of course not."  Fairchild had found his senses.  "But it
was n't a man.  It--it was a boy, just about fifteen years old."

"Sure?"

"Oh, yes--"  Fairchild was swimming in deep water now.  "I got a good
look at him.  He--he took that road off to the left."

It was the opposite one to which the hurrying fugitive in whipcord had
taken.  There was doubt in the interrogator's eyes.

"Sure of that?" he queried.  "I 'm the sheriff of Arapahoe County.
That's an auto bandit ahead of us.  We--"

"Well, I would n't swear to it.  There was another machine ahead, and I
lost 'em both for a second down there by the turn.  I did n't see the
other again, but I did get a glimpse of one off on that side road.  It
looked like the car that passed me.  That's all I know."

"Probably him, all right."  The voice came from the tonneau.  "Maybe he
figured to give us the slip and get back to Denver.  You did n't notice
the license number?"  This to Fairchild.  That bewildered person shook
his head.

"No.  Did n't you?"

"Could n't--covered with dust when we first took the trail and never
got close enough afterward.  But it was the same car--that's almost a
cinch."

"Let's go!"  The sheriff was pressing a foot on the accelerator.  Down
the hill went the car, to skid, then to make a short turn on to the
road which led away from the scent, leaving behind a man standing in
the middle of the road, staring at a ten-dollar bill,--and wondering
why he had lied!




CHAPTER IV

Wonderment which got nowhere.  The sheriff's car returned before
Fairchild reached the bottom of the grade, and again stopped to survey
the scene of defeat, while Fairchild once more told his story, deleting
items which, to him, appeared unnecessary for consumption by officers
of the law.  Carefully the sheriff surveyed the winding road before him
and scratched his head.

"Don't guess it would have made much difference which way he went,"
came ruefully at last, "I never saw a fellow turn loose with so much
speed on a mountain road.  We never could have caught him!"

"Dangerous character?"  Fairchild hardly knew why he asked the
question.  The sheriff smiled grimly.

"If it was the fellow we were after, he was plenty dangerous.  We were
trailing him on word from Denver--described the car and said he 'd
pulled a daylight hold-up on a pay-wagon for the Smelter Company--so
when the car went through Golden, we took up the trail a couple of
blocks behind.  He kept the same speed for a little while until one of
my deputies got a little anxious and took a shot at a tire.  Man, how
he turned on the juice!  I thought that thing was a jack rabbit the way
it went up the hill!  We never had a chance after that!"

"And you 're sure it was the same person?"

The sheriff toyed with the gear shift.

"You never can be sure about nothing in this business," came finally.
"But there 's this to think about: if that fellow was n't guilty of
something, why did he run?"

"It might have been a kid in a stolen machine," came from the back seat.

"If it was, we 've got to wait until we get a report on it.  I guess
it's us back to the office."

The automobile went its way then, and Fairchild his, still wondering;
the sheriff's question, with a different gender, recurring again and
again:

"If she was n't guilty of something, why did she run?"

And why had she?  More, why had she been willing to give ten dollars in
payment for the mere changing of a tire?  And why had she not offered
some explanation of it all?  It was a problem which almost wiped out
for Robert Fairchild the zest of the new life into which he was going,
the great gamble he was about to take.  And so thoroughly did it
engross him that it was not until a truck had come to a full stop
behind him, and a driver mingled a shout with the tooting of his horn,
that he turned to allow its passage.

"Did n't hear you, old man," he apologized.  "Could you give a fellow a
lift?"

"Guess so."  It was friendly, even though a bit disgruntled; "hop on."

And Fairchild hopped, once more to sit on the tailboard, swinging his
legs, but this time his eyes saw the ever-changing scenery without
noticing it.  In spite of himself, Fairchild found himself constantly
staring at a vision of a pretty girl in a riding habit, with dark-brown
hair straying about equally dark-brown eyes, almost frenzied in her
efforts to change a tire in time to elude a pursuing sheriff.  Some
way, it all did n't blend.  Pretty girls, no doubt, could commit
infractions of the law just as easily as ones less gifted with good
looks.  Yet if this particular pretty girl had held up a pay wagon, why
did n't the telephoned notice from Denver state the fact, instead of
referring to her as a man?  And if she had n't committed some sort of
depredation against the law, why on earth was she willing to part with
ten dollars, merely to save a few moments in changing a tire and thus
elude a sheriff?  If there had been nothing wrong, could not a moment
of explanation have satisfied any one of the fact?  Anyway, were n't
the officers looking for a man instead of for a woman?  And yet:

"If she was n't guilty of something, why did she run?"

It was too much for any one, and Fairchild knew it.  Yet he clung
grimly to the mystery as the truck clattered on, mile after mile, while
the broad road led along the sides of the hills, finally to dip
downward and run beside the bubbling Clear Creek,--clear no longer in
the memory of the oldest inhabitant; but soiled by the silica from ore
deposits that, churned and rechurned, gave to the stream a whitish,
almost milk-like character, as it twisted in and out of the tortuous
cañon on its turbulent journey to the sea.  But Fairchild failed to
notice either that or the fact that ancient, age-whitened water wheels
had begun to appear here and there, where gulch miners, seekers after
gold in the silt of the creek's bed, had abandoned them years before;
that now and then upon the hills showed the gaunt scars of mine
openings,--reminders of dreams of a day long past; or even the more
important fact that in the distance, softened by the mellowing rays of
a dying sun, a small town gradually was coming into view.  A mile more,
then the truck stopped with a jerk.

"Where you bound for, pardner?"

Fairchild turned absently, then grinned in embarrassment.

"Ohadi."

"That's it, straight ahead.  I turn off here.  Stranger?"

"Yep."

"Miner?"

Fairchild shrugged his shoulders and nodded noncommittally.  The truck
driver toyed with his wheel.

"Just thought I 'd ask.  Plenty of work around here for single and
double jackers.  Things are beginning to look up a bit--at least in
silver.  Gold mines ain't doing much yet--but there 's a good deal
happening with the white stuff."

"Thanks.  Do you know a good place to stop?"

"Yeh.  Mother Howard's Boarding House.  Everybody goes there, sooner or
later.  You 'll see it on the left-hand side of the street before you
get to the main block.  Good old girl; knows how to treat anybody in
the mining game from operators on down.  She was here when mining was
mining!"

Which was enough recommendation for Mother Howard.  Fairchild lifted
his bag from the rear of the vehicle, waved a farewell to the driver
and started into the village.  And then--for once--the vision of the
girl departed, momentarily, to give place to other thoughts, other
pictures, of a day long gone.

The sun was slanting low, throwing deep shadows from the hills into the
little valley with its chattering, milk-white stream, softening the
scars of the mountains with their great refuse dumps; reminders of
hopes of twenty years before and as bare of vegetation as in the days
when the pick and gad and drill of the prospector tore the rock loose
from its hiding place under the surface of the ground.  Nature, in the
mountainous country, resents any outrage against her dignity; the scars
never heal; the mine dumps of a score of years ago remain the same,
without a single shrub or weed or blade of grass growing in the big
heaps of rocky refuse to shield them.

But now it was all softened and aglow with sunset.  The deep red
buildings of the Argonaut tunnel--a great, criss-crossing hole through
the hills that once connected with more than thirty mines and their
feverish activities--were denuded of their rust and lack of repair.
The steam from the air-compressing engine, furnishing the necessary
motive power for the drills that still worked in the hills, curled
upward in billowy, rainbow-like coloring.  The scrub pines of the
almost barren mountains took on a fluffier, softer tone; the jutting
rocks melted away into their own shadows, it was a picture of peace and
of memories.

And it had been here that Thornton Fairchild, back in the nineties, had
dreamed his dreams and fought his fight.  It had been here--somewhere
in one of the innumerable cañons that led away from the little town on
every side--that Thornton Fairchild had followed the direction of
"float ore" to its resting place, to pursue the vagrant vein through
the hills, to find it at last, to gloat over it in his letters to
Beamish and then to--what?

A sudden cramping caught the son's heart, and it pounded with something
akin to fear.  The old foreboding of his father's letter had come upon
him, the mysterious thread of that elusive, intangible Thing, great
enough to break the will and resistance of a strong man and turn him
into a weakling--silent, white-haired--sitting by a window, waiting for
death.  What had it been?  Why had it come upon his father?  How could
it be fought?  All so suddenly, Robert Fairchild had realized that he
was in the country of the invisible enemy, there to struggle against it
without the slightest knowledge of what it was or how it could be
combated.  His forehead felt suddenly damp and cold.  He brushed away
the beady perspiration with a gesture almost of anger, then with a look
of relief, turned in at a small white gate toward a big, rambling
building which proclaimed itself, by the sign on the door, to be Mother
Howard's Boarding House.

A moment of waiting, then he faced a gray-haired, kindly faced woman,
who stared at him with wide-open eyes as she stood, hands on hips,
before him.

"Don't you tell me I don't know you!" she burst forth at last.

"I 'm afraid you don't."

"Don't I?" Mother Howard cocked her head.  "If you ain't a Fairchild, I
'll never feed another miner corned beef and cabbage as long as I live.
Ain't you now?" she persisted, "ain't you a Fairchild?"

The man laughed in spite of himself.  "You guessed it."

"You 're Thornton Fairchild's boy!"  She had reached out for his
handbag, and then, bustling about him, drew him into the big "parlor"
with its old-fashioned, plush-covered chairs, its picture album, its
glass-covered statuary on the old, onyx mantel.  "Did n't I know you
the minute I saw you?  Land, you're the picture of your dad!  Sakes
alive, how is he?"

There was a moment of silence.  Fairchild found himself suddenly
halting and boyish as he stood before her.

"He 's--he 's gone, Mrs. Howard."

"Dead?"  She put up both hands.  "It don't seem possible.  And me
remembering him looking just like you, full of life and strong and--"

"Our pictures of him are a good deal different.  I--I guess you knew
him when everything was all right for him.  Things were different after
he got home again."

Mother Howard looked quickly about her, then with a swift motion closed
the door.

"Son," she asked in a low voice, "did n't he ever get over it?"

"It?"  Fairchild felt that he stood on the threshold of discoveries.
"What do you mean?"

"Didn't he ever tell you anything, Son?"

"No.  I--"

"Well, there was n't any need to."  But Mother Howard's sudden
embarrassment, her change of color, told Fairchild it was n't the
truth.  "He just had a little bad luck out here, that was all.
His--his mine pinched out just when he thought he 'd struck it rich--or
something like that."

"Are you sure that is the truth?"

For a second they faced each other, Robert Fairchild serious and
intent, Mother Howard looking at him with eyes defiant, yet
compassionate.  Suddenly they twinkled, the lips broke from their
straight line into a smile, and a kindly old hand reached out to take
him by the arm.

"Don't you stand there and try to tell Mother Howard she don't know
what she 's talking about!" came in tones of mock severity.  "Hear me?
Now, you get up them steps and wash up for dinner.  Take the first room
on the right.  It's a nice, cheery place.  And get that dust and grime
off of you.  The dinner bell will ring in about fifteen minutes, and
they 's always a rush for the food.  So hurry!"

In his room, Fairchild tried not to think.  His brain was becoming too
crammed with queries, with strange happenings and with the aggravating
mysticisms of the life into which his father's death had thrown him to
permit clearness of vision.  Even in Mother Howard, he had not been
able to escape it; she told all too plainly, both by her actions and
her words, that she knew something of the mystery of the past,--and had
falsified to keep the knowledge from him.

It was too galling for thought.  Robert Fairchild hastily made his
toilet, then answered the ringing of the dinner bell, to be introduced
to strong-shouldered men who gathered about the long tables;
Cornishmen, who talked an "h-less" language, ruddy-faced Americans, and
a sprinkling of English, all of whom conversed about things which were
to Fairchild as so much Greek,--of "levels" and "stopes" and "winzes",
of "skips" and "manways" and "raises", which meant nothing to the man
who yet must master them all, if he were to follow his ambition.  Some
ate with their knives, meeting the food halfway from their plates; some
acted and spoke in a manner revealing a college education and the poise
that it gives.  But all were as one, all talking together; the operator
no more enthusiastic than the man whose sole recompense was the five
dollars a day he received for drilling powder holes; all happy, all
optimistic, all engrossed in the hopes and dreams that only mining can
give.  And among them Mother Howard moved, getting the latest gossip
from each, giving her views on every problem and incidentally seeing
that the plates were filled to the satisfaction of even the hungriest.

As for Robert Fairchild, he spoke but seldom, except to acknowledge the
introductions as Mother Howard made him known to each of his table
mates.  But it was not aloofness; it was the fact that these men were
talking of things which Fairchild longed to know, but failed, for the
moment, to master.  From the first, the newcomer had liked the men
about him, liked the ruggedness, the mingling of culture with the lack
of it, liked the enthusiasm, the muscle and brawn, liked them all,--all
but two.

Instinctively, from the first mention of his name, he felt they were
watching him, two men who sat far in the rear of the big dining room,
older than the other occupants, far less inviting in appearance.  One
was small, though chunky in build, with sandy hair and eyebrows; with
weak, filmy blue eyes over which the lids blinked constantly.  The
other, black-haired with streaks of gray, powerful in his build, and
with a walrus-like mustache drooping over hard lips, was the sort of
antithesis naturally to be found in the company of the smaller, sandy
complexioned man.  Who they were, what they were, Fairchild did not
know, except from the general attributes which told that they too
followed the great gamble of mining.  But one thing was certain; they
watched him throughout the meal; they talked about him in low tones and
ceased when Mother Howard came near; they seemed to recognize in him
some one who brought both curiosity and innate enmity to the surface.
And more; long before the rest had finished their meal, they rose and
left the room, intent, apparently, upon some important mission.

After that, Fairchild ate with less of a relish.  In his mind was the
certainty that these two men knew him--or at least knew about him--and
that they did not relish his presence.  Nor were his suspicions long in
being fulfilled.  Hardly had he reached the hall, when the beckoning
eyes of Mother Howard signaled to him.  Instinctively he waited for the
other diners to pass him, then looked eagerly toward Mother Howard as
she once more approached.

"I don't know what you 're doing here," came shortly, "but I want to."

Fairchild straightened.  "There is n't much to tell you," he answered
quietly.  "My father left me the Blue Poppy mine in his will.  I 'm
here to work it."

"Know anything about mining?"

"Not a thing."

"Or the people you 're liable to have to buck up against?"

"Very little."

"Then, Son," and Mother Howard laid a kindly hand on his arm, "whatever
you do, keep your plans to yourself and don't talk too much.  And
what's more, if you happen to get into communication with Blindeye
Bozeman and Taylor Bill, lie your head off.  Maybe you saw 'em, a
sandy-haired fellow and a big man with a black mustache, sitting at the
back of the room?"  Fairchild nodded.  "Well, stay away from them.
They belong to 'Squint' Rodaine.  Know him?"

She shot the question sharply.  Again Fairchild nodded.

"I 've heard the name.  Who is he?"

A voice called to Mother Howard from the dining room.  She turned away,
then leaned close to Robert Fairchild.  "He 's a miner, and he 's
always been a miner.  Right now, he 's mixed up with some of the
biggest people in town.  He 's always been a man to be afraid of--and
he was your father's worst enemy!"

Then, leaving Fairchild staring after her, she moved on to her duties
in the kitchen.




CHAPTER V

Impatiently Fairchild awaited Mother Howard's return, and when at last
she came forth from the kitchen, he drew her into the old parlor,
shadowy now in the gathering dusk, and closed the doors.

"Mrs. Howard," he began, "I--"

"Mother Howard," she corrected.  "I ain't used to being called much
else."

"Mother, then--although I 'm not very accustomed to using the title.
My own mother died--shortly after my father came back from out here."

She walked to his side then and put a hand on his shoulders.  For a
moment it seemed that her lips were struggling to repress something
which strove to pass them, something locked behind them for years.
Then the old face, dim in the half light, calmed.

"What do you want to know, Son?"

"Everything!"

"But there is n't much I can tell."

He caught her hand.

"There is!  I know there is.  I--"

"Son--all I can do is to make matters worse.  If I knew anything that
would help you--if I could give you any light on anything, Old Mother
Howard would do it!  Lord, did n't I help out your father when he
needed it the worst way?  Did n't I--"

"But tell me what you know!"  There was pleading in Fairchild's voice.
"Can't you understand what it all means to me?  Anything--I 'm at sea,
Mother Howard!  I 'm lost--you 've hinted to me about enemies, my
father hinted to me about them--but that's all.  Is n't it fair that I
should know as much as possible if they still exist, and I 'm to make
any kind of a fight against them?"

"You 're right, Son.  But I 'm as much in the dark as you.  In those
days, if you were a friend to a person, you didn't ask questions.  All
that I ever knew was that your father came to this boarding house when
he was a young man, the very first day that he ever struck Ohadi.  He
did n't have much money, but he was enthusiastic--and it was n't long
before he 'd told me about his wife and baby back in Indianapolis and
how he 'd like to win out for their sake.  As for me--well, they always
called me Mother Howard, even when I was a young thing, sort of setting
my cap for every good-looking young man that came along.  I guess
that's why I never caught one of 'em--I always insisted on darning
their socks and looking after all their troubles for 'em instead of
going out buggy-riding with some other fellow and making 'em jealous."
She sighed ever so slightly, then chuckled.  "But that ain't getting to
the point, though, is it?"

"If you could tell me about my father--"

"I 'm going to--all I know.  Things were a lot different out here then
from what they were later.  Silver was wealth to anybody that could
find it; every month, the Secretary of the Treasury was required by law
to buy three or four million ounces for coining purposes, and it meant
a lot of money for us all.  Everywhere around the hills and gulches you
could see prospectors, with their gads and little picks, fooling around
like life did n't mean anything in the world to 'em, except to grub
around in those rocks.  That was the idea, you see, to fool around
until they 'd found a bit of ore or float, as they called it, and then
follow it up the gorge until they came to rock or indications that 'd
give 'em reason to think that the vein was around there somewhere.
Then they 'd start to make their tunnel--to drift in on the vein.  I 'm
telling you all this, so you 'll understand."

Fairchild was listening eagerly.  A moment's pause and the old
lodging-house keeper went on.

"Your father was one of these men.  'Squint' Rodaine was another--they
called him that because at some time in his life he 'd tried to shoot
faster than the other fellow--and did n't do it.  The bullet hit right
between his eyes, but it must have had poor powder behind it--all it
did was to cut through the skin and go straight up his forehead.  When
the wound healed, the scar drew his eyes close together, like a
Chinaman's.  You never see Squint's eyes more than half open.

"And he's crooked, just like his eyes--"  Mother Howard's voice bore a
touch of resentment.  "I never liked him from the minute I first saw
him, and I liked him less afterward.  Then I got next to his game.

"Your father had been prospecting just like everybody else.  He 'd come
on float up Kentucky Gulch and was trying to follow it to the vein.
Squint saw him--and what's more, he saw that float.  It looked good to
Squint--and late that night, I heard him and his two drinking partners,
Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill--they just reverse his name for the
sound of it--talking in Blindeye's room.  I 'm a woman--"  Mother
Howard chuckled--"so I just leaned my head against the door and
listened.  Then I flew downstairs to wait for your father when he came
in from sitting up half the night to get an assay on that float.  And
you bet I told him--folks can't do sneaking things around me and get
away with it, and it was n't more 'n five minutes after he 'd got home
that your father knew what was going on--how Squint and them two others
was figuring on jumping his claim before he could file on it and all
that.

"Well, there was a big Cornishman here that I was kind of sweet on--and
I guess I always will be.  He 's been gone now though, ever since your
father left.  I got him and asked him to help.  And Harry was just the
kind of a fellow that would do it.  Out in the dead of night they went
and staked out your father's claim--Harry was to get twenty-five per
cent--and early the next morning your dad was waiting to file on it,
while Harry was waiting for them three.  And what a fight it must have
been--that Harry was a wildcat in those younger days."  She laughed,
then her voice grew serious.  "But all had its effect.  Rodaine did n't
jump that claim, and a few of us around here filed dummy claims enough
in the vicinity to keep him off of getting too close--but there was one
way we couldn't stop him.  He had power, and he 's always had it--and
he 's got it now.  A lot of awful strange things happened to your
father after that--charges were filed against him for things he never
did.  Men jumped on him in the dark, then went to the district
attorney's office and accused him of making the attack.  And the funny
part was that the district attorney's office always believed them--and
not him.  Once they had him just at the edge of the penitentiary, but
I--I happened to know a few things that--well, he did n't go."  Again
Mother Howard chuckled, only to grow serious once more.  "Those days
were a bit wild in Ohadi--everybody was crazy with the gold or silver
fever; out of their head most of the time.  Men who went to work for
your father and Harry disappeared, or got hurt accidentally in the mine
or just quit through the bad name it was getting.  Once Harry, coming
down from the tunnel at night, stepped on a little bridge that always
before had been as secure and safe as the hills themselves.  It fell
with him--they went down together thirty feet, and there was nothing
but Nature to blame for it, in spite of what we three thought.  Then,
at last, they got a fellow who was willing to work for them in spite of
what Rodaine's crowd--and it consisted of everybody in power--hinted
about your father's bad reputation back East and--"

"My father never harmed a soul in his life!"  Fairchild's voice was
hot, resentful.  Mother Howard went on:

"I know he did n't, Son.  I 'm only telling the story.  Miners are
superstitious as a general rule, and they 're childish at believing
things.  It all worked in your father's case--with the exception of
Harry and 'Sissie' Larsen, a Swede with a high voice, just about like
mine.  That's why they gave him the name.  Your father offered him
wages and a ten per cent. bonus.  He went to work.  A few months later
they got into good ore.  That paid fairly well, even if it was
irregular.  It looked like the bad luck was over at last.  Then--"

Mother Howard hesitated at the brink of the very nubbin of it all, to
Robert Fairchild.  A long moment followed, in which he repressed a
desire to seize her and wrest it from her, and at last--

"It was about dusk one night," she went on.  "Harry came in and took me
with him into this very room.  He kissed me and told me that he must go
away.  He asked me if I would go with him--without knowing why.  And,
Son, I trusted him, I would have done anything for him--but I was n't
as old then as I am now.  I refused--and to this day, I don't know why.
It--it was just woman, I guess.  Then he asked me if I would help him.
I said I would.

"He did n't tell me much; except that he had been uptown spreading the
word that the ore had pinched out and that the hanging rock had caved
in and that he and 'Sissie' and your father were through, that they
were beaten and were going away that night.  But--and Harry waited a
long time before he told me this--'Sissie' was not going with them.

"'I'm putting a lot in your hands,' he told me, 'but you 've got to
help us.  "Sissie" won't be there--and I can't tell you why.  The town
must think that he is.  Your voice is just like "Sissie's."  You 've
got to help us out of town.'

"And I promised.  Late that night, the three of us drove up the main
street, your father on one side of the seat.  Harry on the other, and
me, dressed in some of Sissie's clothes, half hidden between them.  I
was singing; that was Sissie's habit,--to get roaring drunk and blow
off steam by yodelling song after song as he rolled along.  Our voices
were about the same; nobody dreamed that I was any one else but the
Swede--my head was tipped forward, so they couldn't see my features.
And we went our way with the miners standing on the curb waving to us,
and not one of them knowing that the person who sat between your father
and Harry was any one except Larsen.  We drove outside town and
stopped.  Then we said good-by, and I put on an old dress that I had
brought with me and sneaked back home.  Nobody knew the difference."

"But Larsen--?"

"You know as much as I do, Son."

"But did n't they tell you?"

"They told me nothing and I asked 'em nothing.  They were my friends
and they needed help.  I gave it to them--that's all I know and that's
all I 've wanted to know."

"You never saw Larsen again?"

"I never saw any of them.  That was the end."

"But Rodaine--?"

"He 's still here.  You 'll hear from him--plenty soon.  I could see
that, the minute Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill began taking your
measure.  You noticed they left the table before the meal was over?  It
was to tell Rodaine."

"Then he'll fight me too?"

Mother Howard laughed,--and her voice was harsh.

"Rodaine's a rattlesnake.  His son 's a rattlesnake.  His wife 's
crazy--Old Crazy Laura.  He drove her that way.  She lives by herself,
in an old house on the Georgeville road.  And she 'd kill for him, even
if he does beat her when she goes to his house and begs him to take her
back.  That's the kind of a crowd it is.  You can figure it out for
yourself.  She goes around at night, gathering herbs in graveyards; she
thinks she 's a witch.  The old man mutters to himself and hates any
one who doesn't do everything he asks,--and just about everybody does
it, simply through fear.  And just to put a good finish on it all, the
young 'un moves in the best society in town and spends most of his time
trying to argue the former district judge's daughter into marrying him.
So there you are.  That's all Mother Howard knows, Son."

She reached for the door and then, turning, patted Fairchild on the
shoulder.

"Boy," came quietly, "you 've got a broad back and a good head.
Rodaine beat your father--don't let him beat you.  And always remember
one thing: Old Mother Howard 's played the game before, and she 'll
play it with you--against anybody.  Good night.  Go to bed--dark
streets are n't exactly the place for you."

Robert Fairchild obeyed the instructions, a victim of many a
conjecture, many an attempt at reasoning as he sought sleep that was
far away.  Again and again there rose before him the vision of two men
in an open buggy, with a singing, apparently maudlin person between
them whom Ohadi believed to be an effeminate-voiced Swede; in reality,
only a woman.  And why had they adopted the expedient?  Why had not
Larsen been with them in reality?  Fairchild avoided the obvious
conclusion and turned to other thoughts, to Rodaine with his squint
eyes, to Crazy Laura, gathering herbs at midnight in the shadowy,
stone-sentineled stretches of graveyards, while the son, perhaps,
danced at some function of Ohadi's society and made love in the rest
periods.  It was all grotesque; it was fantastic, almost
laughable,--had it not concerned him!  For Rodaine had been his
father's enemy, and Mother Howard had told him enough to assure him
that Rodaine did not forget.  The crazed woman of the graveyards was
Squint's lunatic wife, ready to kill, if necessary, for a husband who
beat her.  And the young Rodaine was his son, blood of his blood; that
was enough.  It was hours before Fairchild found sleep, and even then
it was a thing of troubled visions.

Streaming sun awakened him, and he hurried to the dining room to find
himself the last lodger at the tables.  He ate a rather hasty meal,
made more so by an impatient waitress, then with the necessary papers
in his pocket, Fairchild started toward the courthouse and the legal
procedure which must be undergone before he made his first trip to the
mine.

A block or two, and then Fairchild suddenly halted.  Crossing the
street at an angle just before him was a young woman whose features,
whose mannerisms he recognized.  The whipcord riding habit had given
place now to a tailored suit which deprived her of the boyishness that
had been so apparent on their first meeting.  The cap had disappeared
before a close-fitting, vari-colored turban.  But the straying brown
hair still was there, the brown eyes, the piquant little nose and the
prettily formed lips.  Fairchild's heart thumped,--nor did he stop to
consider why.  A quickening of his pace, and he met her just as she
stepped to the curbing.

"I 'm so glad of this opportunity," he exclaimed happily.  "I want to
return that money to you.  I--I was so fussed yesterday I did n't
realize--"

"Aren't you mistaken?"  She had looked at him with a slight smile.
Fairchild did not catch the inflection.

"Oh, no.  I 'm the man, you know, who helped you change that tire on
the Denver road yesterday."

"Pardon me."  This time one brown eye had wavered ever so slightly,
indicating some one behind Fairchild.  "But I was n't on the Denver
road yesterday, and if you 'll excuse me for saying it, I don't
remember ever having seen you before."

There was a little light in her eyes which took away the sting of the
denial, a light which seemed to urge caution, and at the same time to
tell Fairchild that she trusted him to do his part as a gentleman in a
thing she wished forgotten.  More fussed than ever, he drew back and
bent low in apology, while she passed on.  Half a block away, a young
man rounded a corner and, seeing her, hastened to join her.  She
extended her hand; they chatted a moment, then strolled up the street
together.  Fairchild watched blankly, then turned at a chuckle just
behind him emanating from the bearded lips of an old miner, loafing on
the stone coping in front of a small store.

"Pick the wrong filly, pardner?" came the query.  Fairchild managed to
smile.

"Guess so."  Then he lied quickly.  "I thought she was a girl from
Denver."

"Her?"  The old miner stretched.  "Nope.  That's Anita Richmond, old
Judge Richmond's daughter.  Guess she must have been expecting that
young fellow--or she would n't have cut you off so short.  She ain't
usually that way."

"Her fiancé?"  Fairchild asked the question with misgiving.  The miner
finished his stretch and added a yawn to it.  Then he looked
appraisingly up the street toward the retreating figures.  "Well, some
say he is and some say he ain't.  Guess it mostly depends on the girl,
and she ain't telling yet."

"And the man--who is he?"

"Him?  Oh, he 's Maurice Rodaine.  Son of a pretty famous character
around here, old Squint Rodaine.  Owns the Silver Queen property up the
hill.  Ever hear of him?"

The eyes of Robert Fairchild narrowed, and a desire to fight--a longing
to grapple with Squint Rodaine and all that belonged to him--surged
into his heart.  But his voice, when he spoke, was slow and suppressed.

"Squint Rodaine?  Yes, I think I have.  The name sounds rather
familiar."

Then, deliberately, he started up the street, following at a distance
the man and the girl who walked before him.




CHAPTER VI

There was no specific reason why Robert Fairchild should follow Maurice
Rodaine and the young woman who had been described to him as the
daughter of Judge Richmond, whoever he might be.  And Fairchild sought
for none--within two weeks he had been transformed from a plodding,
methodical person into a creature of impulses, and more and more, as
time went on, he was allowing himself to be governed by the snap
judgment of his brain rather than by the carefully exacting mind of a
systematic machine, such as he had been for the greater part of his
adult life.  All that he cared to know was that resentment was in his
heart,--resentment that the family of Rodaine should be connected in
some way with the piquant, mysterious little person he had helped out
of a predicament on the Denver road the day before.  And, to his
chagrin, the very fact that there _was_ a connection added a more
sinister note to the escapade of the exploded tire and the pursuing
sheriff; as he walked along, his gaze far ahead, Fairchild found
himself wondering whether there could be more than mere coincidence in
it all, whether she was a part of the Rodaine schemes and the Rodaine
trickery, whether--

But he ceased his wondering to turn sharply into a near-by drug store,
there absently to give an order at the soda fountain and stand watching
the pair who had stopped just in front of him on the corner.  She was
the same girl; there could be no doubt of that, and he raged inwardly
as she chatted and chaffed with the man who looked down upon her with a
smiling air of proprietorship which instilled instant rebellion in
Fairchild's heart.  Nor did he know the reason for that, either.

After a moment they parted, and Fairchild gulped at his fountain drink.
She had hesitated, then with a quick decision turned straight into the
drug store.

"Buy a ticket, Mr. McCauley?" she asked of the man behind the counter.
"I 've sold twenty already, this morning.  Only five more, and my work
's over."

"Going to be pretty much of a crowd, is n't there?"  The druggist was
fishing in his pocket for money.  Fairchild, dallying with his drink
now, glanced sharply toward the door and went back to his refreshment.
She was standing directly in the entrance, fingering the five remaining
tickets.

"Oh, everybody in town.  Please take the five, won't you?  Then I 'll
be through."

"I 'll be darned if I will, 'Nita!"  McCauley backed against a shelf
case in mock self-defense.  "Every time you 've got anything you want
to get rid of, you come in here and shove it off on me.  I 'll be gosh
gim-swiggled if I will.  There 's only four in my family and four 's
all I 'm going to take.  Fork 'em over--I 've got a prescription to
fill."  He tossed four silver dollars on the showcase and took the
tickets.  The girl demurred.

"But how about the fifth one?  I 've got to sell that too--"

"Well, sell it to him!"  And Fairchild, looking into the soda-fountain
mirror, saw himself indicated as the druggist started toward the
prescription case.  "I ain't going to let myself get stuck for another
solitary, single one!"

There was a moment of awkward silence as Fairchild gazed intently into
his soda glass, then with a feeling of queer excitement, set it on the
marble counter and turned.  Anita Richmond had accepted the druggist's
challenge.  She was approaching--in a stranger-like manner--a ticket of
some sort held before her.

"Pardon me," she began, "but would you care to buy a ticket?"

"To--to what?"  It was all Fairchild could think of to say.

"To the Old Timers' Dance.  It's a sort of municipal thing, gotten up
by the bureau of mines--to celebrate the return of silver mining."

"But--but I 'm afraid I 'm not much on dancing."

"You don't have to be.  Nobody 'll dance much--except the old-fashioned
affairs.  You see, everybody 's supposed to represent people of the
days when things were booming around here.  There 'll be a fiddle
orchestra, and a dance caller and everything like that, and a bar--but
of course there 'll only be imitation liquor.  But," she added with
quick emphasis, "there 'll be a lot of things really real--real keno
and roulette and everything like that, and everybody in the costume of
thirty or forty years ago.  Don't you want to buy a ticket?  It's the
last one I 've got!" she added prettily.  But Robert Fairchild had been
listening with his eyes, rather than his ears.  Jerkily he came to the
realization that the girl had ceased speaking.

"When's it to be?"

"A week from to-morrow night.  Are you going to be here that long?"

She realized the slip of her tongue and colored slightly.  Fairchild,
recovered now, reached into a pocket and carefully fingered the bills
there.  Then, with a quick motion, as he drew them forth, he covered a
ten-dollar bill with a one-dollar note and thrust them forward.

"Yes, I 'll take the ticket."

She handed it to him, thanked him, and reached for the money.  As it
passed into her hand, a corner of the ten-dollar bill revealed itself,
and she hastily thrust it toward him as though to return money paid by
mistake.  Just as quickly, she realized his purpose and withdrew her
hand.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, almost in a whisper, "I understand."  She flushed
and stood a second hesitant, flustered, her big eyes almost childish as
they looked up into his.  "You--you must think I 'm a cad!"  Then she
whirled and left the store, and a slight smile came to the lips of
Robert Fairchild as he watched her hurrying across the street.  He had
won a tiny victory, at least.

Not until she had rounded a corner and disappeared did Fairchild leave
his point of vantage.  Then, with a new enthusiasm, a greater desire
than ever to win out in the fight which had brought him to Ohadi, he
hurried to the courthouse and the various technicalities which must be
coped with before he could really call the Blue Poppy mine his own.

It was easier than he thought.  A few signatures, and he was free to
wander through town to where idlers had pointed out Kentucky gulch and
to begin the steep ascent up the narrow road on a tour of prospecting
that would precede the more legal and more safe system of a surveyor.

The ascent was almost sheer in places, for in Kentucky gulch the hills
huddled close to the little town and rose in precipitous inclines
almost before the city limits had been reached.  Beside the road a
small stream chattered, milk-white from the silica deposits of the
mines, like the waters of Clear Creek, which it was hastening to join.
Along the gullies were the scars of prospect holes, staring like dark,
blind eyes out upon the gorge;--reminders of the lost hopes of a day
gone by.  Here and there lay some discarded piece of mining machinery,
rust-eaten and battered now, washed down inch by inch from the higher
hill where it had been abandoned when the demonetization of silver
struck, like a rapier, into the hearts of grubbing men, years before.
It was a cañon of decay, yet of life, for as he trudged along, the roar
of great motors came to Fairchild's ears; and a moment later he stepped
aside to allow the passage of ore-laden automobile trucks, loaded until
the springs had flattened and until the engines howled with their
compression as they sought to hold back their burdens on the steep
grade.  And it was as he stood there, watching the big vehicles travel
down the mountain side, that Fairchild caught a glimpse of a human
figure which suddenly darted behind a clump of scrub pine and skirted
far to one side, taking advantage of every covering.  A new beat came
into Fairchild's heart.  He took to the road again, plodding upward
apparently without a thought of his pursuer, stopping to stare at the
bleak prospect holes, or to admire the pink-white beauties of the snowy
range in the far distance, seemingly a man entirely bereft of
suspicion.  A quarter of a mile he went, a half.  Once, as the road
turned beside a great rock, he sought its shelter and looked back.  The
figure still was following, running carefully now along the bank of the
stream in an effort to gain as much ground as possible before the
return of the road to open territory should bring the necessity of
caution again.

A mile more, then, again in the shelter of rocks, he swerved and sought
a hiding place, watching anxiously from his concealment for evidences
of discovery.  There were none.  The shadower came on, displaying more
and more caution as he approached the rocks, glancing hurriedly about
him as he moved swiftly from cover to cover.  Closer--closer--then
Fairchild repressed a gasp.  The man was old, almost white-haired, with
hard, knotted hands which seemed to stand out from his wrists; thin and
wiry with the resiliency that outdoor, hardened muscles often give to
age, and with a face that held Fairchild almost hypnotized.  It was
like a hawk's; hook-beaked, colorless, toneless in all expressions save
that of a malicious tenacity; the eyes were slanted until they
resembled those of some fantastic Chinese image, while just above the
curving nose a blue-white scar ran straight up the forehead,--Squint
Rodaine!

So he was on the trail already!  Fairchild watched him pass, sneak
around the corner of the rocks, and stand a moment in apparent
bewilderment as he surveyed the ground before him.  A mumbling curse
and he went on, his cautious gait discarded, walking briskly along the
rutty, boulder-strewn road toward a gaping hole in the hill, hardly a
furlong away.  There he surveyed the ground carefully, bent and stared
hard at the earth, apparently for a trace of footprints, and finding
none, turned slowly and looked intently all about him.  Carefully he
approached the mouth of the tunnel and stared within.  Then he
straightened, and with another glance about him, hurried off up a gulch
leading away from the road, into the hills.  Fairchild lay and watched
him until he was out of sight, and he knew instinctively that a
surveyor would only cover beaten territory now.  Squint Rodaine, he
felt sure, had pointed out to him the Blue Poppy mine.

But he did not follow the direction given by his pursuer.  Squint
Rodaine was in the hills.  Squint Rodaine might return, and the
consciousness of caution bade that Fairchild not be there when he came
back.  Hurriedly he descended the rocks once more to turn toward town
and toward Mother Howard's boarding house.  He wanted to tell her what
he had seen and to obtain her help and counsel.

Quickly he made the return trip, crossing the little bridge over the
turbulent Clear Creek and heading toward the boarding house.  Half a
block away he halted, as a woman on the veranda of the big, squarely
built "hotel" pointed him out, and the great figure of a man shot
through the gate, shouting, and hurried toward him.

A tremendous creature he was, with red face and black hair which seemed
to scramble in all directions at once, and with a mustache which
appeared to scamper in even more directions than his hair.  Fairchild
was a large man; suddenly he felt himself puny and inconsequential as
the mastodonic thing before him swooped forward, spread wide the big
arms and then caught him tight in them, causing the breath to puff over
his lips like the exhaust of a bellows.

A release, then Fairchild felt himself lifted and set down again.  He
pulled hard at his breath.

"What's the matter with you?" he exclaimed testily.  "You 've made a
mistake!"

"I 'm blimed if I 'ave!" bellowed a tornado-like voice.  "Blime!  You
look just like 'im!"

"But you 're mistaken, old man!"

Fairchild was vaguely aware that the spray-like mustache was working
like a dust-broom, that snappy blue eyes were beaming upon him, that
the big red nose was growing redder, while a tremendous paw had seized
his own hand and was doing its best to crush it.

"Blimed if I 'ave!" came again.  "You're your Dad's own boy!  You look
just like 'im!  Don't you know me?"

He stepped back then and stood grinning, his long, heavily muscled arms
hanging low at his sides, his mustache trying vainly to stick out in
more directions than ever.  Fairchild rubbed a hand across his eyes.

"You 've got me!" came at last.  "I--"

"You don't know me?  'Onest now, don't you?  I 'm Arry!  Don't you know
now?  'Arry from Cornwall!"




CHAPTER VII

It came to Fairchild then,--the sentence in his father's letter
regarding some one who would hurry to his aid when he needed him, the
references of Beamish, and the allusion of Mother Howard to a faithful
friend.  He forgot the pain as the tremendous Cornishman banged him on
the back, he forgot the surprise of it all; he only knew that he was
laughing and welcoming a big man old enough in age to be his father,
yet young enough in spirit to want to come back and finish a fight he
had seen begun, and strong enough in physique to stand it.  Again the
heavy voice boomed:

"You know me now, eh?"

"You bet!  You 're Harry Harkins!"

"'Arkins it is!  I came just as soon as I got the cablegram!"

"The cablegram?"

"Yeh."  Harry pawed at his wonderful mustache.  "From Mr. Beamish, you
know.  'E sent it.  Said you 'd started out 'ere all alone.  And I
could n't stand by and let you do that.  So 'ere I am!"

"But the expense, the long trip across the ocean, the--"

"'Ere I am!" said Harry again.  "Ain't that enough?"

They had reached the veranda now, to stand talking for a moment, then
to go within, where Mother Howard awaited, eyes glowing, in the parlor.
Harry flung out both arms.

"And I still love you!" he boomed, as he caught the gray-haired,
laughing woman in his arms.  "Even if you did run me off and would n't
go back to Cornwall!"

Red-faced, she pushed him away and slapped his cheek playfully; it was
like the tap of a light breeze against granite.  Then Harry turned.

"'Ave you looked at the mine?"

The question brought back to Fairchild the happenings of the morning
and the memory of the man who had trailed him.  He told his story,
while Mother Howard listened, her arms crossed, her head bobbing, and
while Harry, his big grin still on his lips, took in the details with
avidity.  Then for a moment a monstrous hand scrambled vaguely about in
the region of the Cornishman's face, grasping a hair of that radiating
mustache now and then and pulling hard at it, at last to drop,--and the
grin faded.

"Le 's go up there," he said quietly.

This time the trip to Kentucky gulch was made by skirting town; soon
they were on the rough, narrow roadway leading into the mountains.
Both were silent for the most part, and the expression on Harry's face
told that he was living again the days of the past, days when men were
making those pock-marks in the hills, when the prospector and his pack
jack could be seen on every trail, and when float ore in a gulley meant
riches waiting somewhere above.  A long time they walked, at last to
stop in the shelter of the rocks where Fairchild had shadowed his
pursuer, and to glance carefully ahead.  No one was in sight.  Harry
jabbed out a big finger.

"That's it," he announced, "straight a'ead!"

They went on, Fairchild with a gripping at his throat that would not
down.  This had been the hope of his father--and here his father had
met--what?  He swerved quickly and stopped, facing the bigger man.

"Harry," came sharply, "I know that I may be violating an unspoken
promise to my father.  But I simply can't stand it any longer.  What
happened here?"

"We were mining--for silver."

"I don't mean that--there was some sort of tragedy."

Harry chuckled,--in concealment, Fairchild thought, of something he did
not want to tell him.

"I should think so!  The timbers gave way and the mine caved in!"

"Not that!  My father ran away from this town.  You and Mother Howard
helped him.  You didn't come back.  Neither did my father.  Eventually
it killed him."

"So?"  Harry looked seriously and studiously at the young man.  "'E did
n't write me of'en."

"He did n't need to write you.  You were here with him--when it
happened."

"No--"  Harry shook his head.  "I was in town."

"But you knew--"

"What's Mother Howard told you?"

"A lot--and nothing."

"I don't know any more than she does."

"But--"

"Friends did n't ask questions in those days," came quietly.  "I might
'ave guessed if I 'd wanted to--but I did n't want to."

"But if you had?"

Harry looked at him with quiet, blue eyes.

"What would you guess?"

Slowly Robert Fairchild's gaze went to the ground.  There was only one
possible conjecture: Sissie Larsen had been impersonated by a woman.
Sissie Larsen had never been seen again in Ohadi.

"I--I would hate to put it into words," came finally.  Harry slapped
him on the shoulder.

"Then don't.  It was nearly thirty years ago.  Let sleeping dogs lie.
Take a look around before we go into the tunnel."

They reconnoitered, first on one side, then on the other.  No one was
in sight.  Harry bent to the ground, and finding a pitchy pine knot,
lighted it.  They started cautiously within, blinking against the
darkness.

A detour and they avoided an ore car, rusty and half filled, standing
on the little track, now sagging on moldy ties.  A moment more of
walking and Harry took the lead.

"It's only a step to the shaft now," he cautioned.  "Easy--easy--look
out for that 'anging wall--" he held the pitch torch against the roof
of the tunnel and displayed a loose, jagged section of rock, dripping
with seepage from the hills above.  "Just a step now--'ere it is."

The outlines of a rusty "hoist", with its cable leading down into a
slanting hole in the rock, showed dimly before them,--a massive,
chunky, deserted thing in the shadows.  About it were clustered drills
that were eaten by age and the dampness of the seepage; farther on a
"skip", or shaft-car, lay on its side, half buried in mud and muck from
the walls of the tunnel.  Here, too, the timbers were rotting; one
after another, they had cracked and caved beneath the weight of the
earth above, giving the tunnel an eerie aspect, uninviting, dangerous.
Harry peered ahead.

"It ain't as bad as it looks," came after a moment's survey.  "It's
only right 'ere at the beginning that it's caved.  But that does n't do
us much good."

"Why not?"  Fairchild was staring with him, on toward the darkness of
the farther recesses.  "If it is n't caved in farther back, we ought to
be able to repair this spot."

But Harry shook his head.

"We did n't go into the vein 'ere," he explained.  "We figured we 'ad
to 'ave a shaft anyway, sooner or later.  You can't do under'and
stoping in a mine--go down on a vein, you know.  You 've always got to
go up--you can't get the metal out if you don't.  That's why we dug
this shaft--and now look at it!"

He drew the flickering torch to the edge of the shaft and held it
there, staring downward.  Fairchild beside him.  Twenty feet below
there came the glistening reflection of the flaring flame.  Water!
Fairchild glanced toward his partner.

"I don't know anything about it," he said at last.  "But I should think
that would mean trouble."

"Plenty!" agreed Harry lugubriously.  "That shaft's two 'unnerd feet
deep and there 's a drift running off it for a couple o' 'unnerd feet
more before it 'its the vein.  Four 'unnerd feet of water.  'Ow much
money 'ave you got?"

"About twenty-five hundred dollars."

Harry reached for his waving mustache, his haven in time of storm.
Thoughtfully he pulled at it, staring meanwhile downward.  Then he
grunted.

"And I ain't got more 'n five 'unnerd.  It ain't enough.  We 'll need
to repair this 'oist and put the skip in order.  We 'll need to build
new track and do a lot of things.  Three thousand dollars ain't enough."

"But we 'll have to get that water out of there before we can do
anything." Fairchild interposed.  "If we can't get at the vein up here,
we 'll have to get at it from below.  And how 're we going to do that
without unwatering that shaft?"

Again Harry pulled at his mustache.

"That's just what 'Arry 's thinking about," came his answer finally.
"Le 's go back to town.  I don't like to stand around this place and
just look at water in a 'ole."

They turned for the mouth of the tunnel, sliding along in the greasy
muck, the torch extinguished now.  A moment of watchfulness from the
cover of the darkness, then Harry pointed.  On the opposite hill, the
figure of a man had been outlined for just a second.  Then he had
faded.  And with the disappearance of the watcher, Harry nudged his
partner in the ribs and went forth into the brighter light.  An hour
more and they were back in town.  Harry reached for his mustache again.

"Go on down to Mother 'Oward's," he commanded.  "I 've got to wander
around and say 'owdy to what's left of the fellows that was 'ere when I
was.  It's been twenty years since I 've been away, you know," he
added, "and the shaft can wait."

Fairchild obeyed the instructions, looking back over his shoulder as he
walked along toward the boarding house, to see the big figure of his
companion loitering up the street, on the beginning of his home-coming
tour.  It was evident that Harry was popular.  Forms rose from the
loitering places on the curbings in front of the stores, voices called
to him; even as the distance grew greater, Fairchild could hear the
shouts of greeting which were sounding to Harry as he announced his
return.

The blocks passed.  Fairchild turned through the gate of Mother
Howard's boarding house and went to his room to await the call for
dinner.  The world did not look exceptionally good to him; his
brilliant dreams had not counted upon the decay of more than a quarter
of a century, the slow, but sure dripping of water which had seeped
through the hills and made the mine one vast well, instead of the free
open gateway to riches which he had planned upon.  True, there had been
before him the certainty of a cave-in, but Fairchild was not a miner,
and the word to him had been a vague affair.  Now, however, it was
taking on a new aspect; he was beginning to realize the full extent of
the fight which was before him if the Blue Poppy mine ever were to turn
forth the silver ore he hoped to gain from it, if the letter of his
father, full of threats though it might be, were to be realized in that
part of it which contained the promise of riches in abundance.

Pitifully small his capital looked to Fairchild now.  Inadequate--that
was certain--for the needs which now stood before it.  And there was no
person to whom he could turn, no one to whom he could go, for more.  To
borrow, one must have security; and with the exception of the faith of
the red-faced Harry, and the promise of a silent man, now dead, there
was nothing.  It was useless; an hour of thought and Fairchild ceased
trying to look into the future, obeying, instead, the insistent
clanging of the dinner bell from downstairs.  Slowly he opened the door
of his room, trudged down the staircase,--then stopped in bewilderment.
Harry stood before him, in all the splendor that a miner can know.

He had bought a new suit, brilliant blue, almost electric in its
flashiness, nor had he been careful as to style.  The cut of the
trousers was somewhat along the lines of fifteen years before, with
their peg tops and heavy cuffs.  Beneath the vest, a glowing,
watermelon-pink shirt glared forth from the protection of a purple tie.
A wonderful creation was on his head, dented in four places, each
separated with almost mathematical precision.  Below the cuffs of the
trousers were bright, tan, bump-toed shoes.  Harry was a complete
picture of sartorial elegance, according to his own dreams.  What was
more, to complete it all, upon the third finger of his right hand was a
diamond, bulbous and yellow and throwing off a dull radiance like the
glow of a burnt-out arclight; full of flaws, it is true, off color to a
great degree, but a diamond nevertheless.  And Harry evidently realized
it.

"Ain't I the cuckoo?" he boomed, as Fairchild stared at him.  "Ain't I?
I 'ad to 'ave a outfit, and--

"It might as well be now!" he paraphrased, to the tune of the
age-whitened sextette from "Floradora."  "And look at the sparkler!
Look at it!"

Fairchild could do very little else but look.  He knew the value, even
in spite of flaws and bad coloring.  And he knew something else, that
Harry had confessed to having little more than five hundred dollars.

"But--but how did you do it?" came gaspingly.  "I thought--"

"Installments!" the Cornishman burst out.  "Ten per cent. down and the
rest when they catch me.  Installments!"  He jabbed forth a heavy
finger and punched Fairchild in the ribs.  "Where's Mother 'Oward?
Won't I knock 'er eyes out?"

Fairchild laughed--he couldn't help it--in spite of the fact that five
hundred dollars might have gone a long way toward unwatering that
shaft.  Harry was Harry--he had done enough in crossing the seas to
help him.  And already, in the eyes of Fairchild, Harry was swiftly
approaching that place where he could do no wrong.

"You 're wonderful, Harry," came at last.  The Cornishman puffed with
pride.

"I'm a cuckoo!" he admitted.  "Where's Mother 'Oward?   Where's Mother
'Oward?  Won't I knock 'er eyes out, now?"

And he boomed forward toward the dining room, to find there men he had
known in other days, to shake hands with them and to bang them on the
back, to sight Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill sitting hunched over
their meal in the corner and to go effusively toward them.  "'Arry" was
playing no favorites in his "'ome-coming."  "'Arry" was "'appy", and a
little thing like the fact that friends of his enemies were present
seemed to make little difference.

Jovially he leaned over the table of Bozeman and Bill, after he had
displayed himself before Mother Howard and received her sanction of his
selections in dress.  Happily he boomed forth the information that
Fairchild and he were back to work the Blue Poppy mine and that they
already had made a trip of inspection.

"I 'm going back this afternoon," he told them.  "There 's water in the
shaft.  I 've got to figure a wye to get it out."

Then he returned to his table and Fairchild leaned close to him.

"Is n't that dangerous?"

"What?"  Harry allowed his eyes to become bulbous as he whispered the
question.  "Telling them two about what we 're going to do?  Won't they
find it out anyway?"

"I guess that's true.  What time are you going to the mine?"

"I don't know that I 'm going.  And then I may.  I 've got to kind of
sye 'ello around town first."

"Then I 'm not to go with you?"

Harry beamed at him.

"It's your day off, Robert," he announced, and they went on with their
meal.

That is, Fairchild proceeded.  Harry did little eating.  Harry was too
busy.  Around him were men he had known in other days, men who had
stayed on at the little silver camp, fighting against the inevitable
downward course of the price of the white metal, hoping for the time
when resuscitation would come, and now realizing that feeling of joy
for which they had waited a quarter of a century.  There were a
thousand questions to be answered, all asked by Harry.  There was
gossip to relate and the lives of various men who had come and gone to
be dilated upon.  Fairchild finished his meal and waited.  But Harry
talked on.  Bozeman and Bill left the dining room again to make a
report to the narrow-faced Squint Rodaine.  Harry did not even notice
them.  And as long as a man stayed to answer his queries, just so long
did Harry remain, at last to rise, brush a few crumbs from his
lightning-like suit, press his new hat gently upon his head with both
hands and start forth once more on his rounds of saying hello.  And
there was nothing for Fairchild to do but to wait as patiently as
possible for his return.

The afternoon grew old.  Harry did not come back.  The sun set and
dinner was served.  But Harry was not there to eat it.  Dusk came, and
then, nervous over the continued absence of his eccentric partner,
Fairchild started uptown.

The usual groups were in front of the stores, and before the largest of
them Fairchild stopped.

"Do any of you happen to know a fellow named Harry Harkins?" he asked
somewhat anxiously.  The answer was in the affirmative.  A miner
stretched out a foot and surveyed it studiously.

"Ain't seen him since about five o'clock," he said at last.  "He was
just starting up to the mine then."

"To the mine?  That late?  Are you sure?"

"Well--I dunno.  May have been going to Center City.  Can't say.  All I
know is he said somethin' about goin' to th' mine earlier in th'
afternoon, an' long about five I seen him starting up Kentucky Gulch."

"Who 's that?"  The interruption had come in a sharp, yet gruff voice.
Fairchild turned to see before him a man he recognized, a tall, thin,
wiry figure, with narrowed, slanting eyes, and a scar that went
straight up his forehead.  He evidently had just rounded the corner in
time to hear the conversation.  Fairchild straightened, and in spite of
himself his voice was strained and hard.

"I was merely asking about my partner in the Blue Poppy mine."

"The Blue Poppy?" the squint eyes narrowed more than ever.  "You 're
Fairchild, ain't you?  Well, I guess you 're going to have to get along
without a partner from now on."

"Get along without--?"

A crooked smile came to the other man's lips.

"That is, unless you want to work with a dead man.  Harry Harkins got
drowned, about an hour ago, in the Blue Poppy shaft!"




CHAPTER VIII

The news caused Fairchild to recoil and stand gasping.  And before he
could speak, a new voice had cut in, one full of excitement, tremulous,
anxious.

"Drowned?  Where 's his body?"

"How do I know?" Squint Rodaine turned upon his questioner.  "Guess
it's at the foot of the shaft.  All I saw was his hat.  What 're you so
interested for?"

The questioner, small, goggle-eyed and given to rubbing his hands,
stared a moment speechlessly.  Then he reached forward and grasped at
the lapels of Rodaine's coat.

"He--he bought a diamond from me this morning--on the installment plan!"

Rodaine smiled again in his crooked fashion.  Then he pushed the
clawlike hands of the excited jeweler away from his lapels.

"That's your own fault, Sam," he announced curtly.  "If he 's at the
bottom of the shaft, your diamond 's there too.  All I know about it is
that I was coming down from the Silver Queen when I saw this fellow go
into the tunnel of the Blue Poppy.  He was all dressed up, else I don't
guess I would have paid much attention to him.  But as it was, I kind
of stopped to look, and seen it was Harry Harkins, who used to work the
mine with this"--he pointed to Fairchild--"this fellow's father.  About
a minute later, I heard a yell, like somebody was in trouble, then a
big splash.  Naturally I ran in the tunnel and struck a match.  About
twenty feet down, I could see the water was all riled up, and a new hat
was floating around on top of it.  I yelled a couple of times and
struck a lot of matches--but he did n't come to the surface.  That's
all I know.  You can do as you please about your diamond.  I 'm just
giving you the information."

He turned sharply and went on then, while Sam the jeweler, the rest of
the loiterers clustered around him, looked appealingly toward Fairchild.

"What 'll we do?" he wailed.

Fairchild turned.  "I don't know about you--but I 'm going to the mine."

"It won't do any good--bodies don't float.  It may never float--if it
gets caught down in the timbers somewheres."

"Have to organize a bucket brigade."  It was a suggestion from one of
the crowd.

"Why not borry the Argonaut pump?  They ain't using it."

"Go get it!  Go get it!"  This time it was the wail of the little
jeweler.  "Tell 'em Sam Herbenfelder sent you.  They 'll let you have
it."

"Can't carry the thing on my shoulder."

"I 'll get the Sampler's truck"--a new volunteer had spoken--"there
won't be any kick about it."

Another suggestion, still another.  Soon men began to radiate, each on
a mission.  The word passed down the street.  More loiterers--a silver
miner spends a great part of his leisure time in simply watching the
crowd go by--hurried to join the excited throng.  Groups, en route to
the picture show, decided otherwise and stopped to learn of the
excitement.  The crowd thickened.  Suddenly Fairchild looked up sharply
at the sound of a feminine voice.

"What is the matter?"

"Harry Harkins got drowned."  All too willingly the news was dispersed.
Fairchild's eyes were searching now in the half-light from the faint
street bulbs.  Then they centered.  It was Anita Richmond, standing at
the edge of the crowd, questioning a miner, while beside her was a
thin, youthful counterpart of a hard-faced father, Maurice Rodaine.
Just a moment of queries, then the miner's hand pointed to Fairchild as
he turned toward her.

"It's his partner."

She moved forward then and Fairchild went to meet her.

"I 'm sorry," she said, and extended her hand.  Fairchild gripped it
eagerly.

"Thank you.  But it may not be as bad as the rumors."

"I hope not."  Then quickly she withdrew her hand, and somewhat
flustered, turned as her companion edged closer.  "Maurice, this is Mr.
Fairchild," she announced, and Fairchild could do nothing but stare.
She knew his name!  A second more and it was explained; "My father knew
his father very well."

"I think my own father was acquainted too," was the rejoinder, and the
eyes of the two men met for an instant in conflict.  The girl did not
seem to notice.

"I sold him a ticket this morning to the dance, not knowing who he was.
Then father happened to see him pass the house and pointed him out to
me as the son of a former friend of his.  Funny how those things
happen, is n't it?"

"Decidedly funny!" was the caustic rejoinder of the younger Rodaine.
Fairchild laughed, to cover the air of intensity.  He knew
instinctively that Anita Richmond was not talking to him simply because
she had sold him a ticket to a dance and because her father might have
pointed him out.  He felt sure that there was something else behind
it,--the feeling of a debt which she owed him, a feeling of
companionship engendered upon a sunlit road, during the moments of
stress, and the continuance of that meeting in those few moments in the
drug store, when he had handed her back her ten-dollar bill.  She had
called herself a cad then, and the feeling that she perhaps had been
abrupt toward a man who had helped her out of a disagreeable
predicament was prompting her action now; Fairchild felt sure of that.
And he was glad of the fact, very glad.  Again he laughed, while
Rodaine eyed him narrowly.  Fairchild shrugged his shoulders.

"I 'm not going to believe this story until it's proven to me," came
calmly.  "Rumors can be started too easily.  I don't see how it was
possible for a man to fall into a mine shaft and not struggle there
long enough for a man who had heard his shout to see him."

"Who brought the news?" Rodaine asked the question.

Fairchild deliberately chose his words:

"A tall, thin, ugly old man, with mean squint eyes and a scar straight
up his forehead."

A flush appeared on the other man's face.  Fairchild saw his hands
contract, then loosen.

"You 're trying to insult my father!"

"Your father?"  Fairchild looked at him blankly.  "Would n't that be a
rather difficult job--especially when I don't know him?"

"You described him."

"And you recognized the description."

"Maurice!  Stop it!"  The girl was tugging at Rodaine's sleeve.  "Don't
say anything more.  I 'm sorry--" and she looked at Fairchild with a
glance he could not interpret--"that anything like this could have come
up."

"I am equally so--if it has caused you embarrassment."

"You 'll get a little embarrassment out of it yourself--before you get
through!"  Rodaine was scowling at him.  Again Anita Richmond caught
his arm.

"Maurice!  Stop it!  How could the thing have been premeditated when he
did n't even know your father?  Come--let's go on.  The crowd's getting
thicker."

The narrow-faced man obeyed her command, and together they turned out
into the street to avoid the constantly growing throng, and to veer
toward the picture show, Fairchild watching after them, wondering
whether to curse or luck himself.  His temper, his natural enmity
toward the two men whom he knew to be his enemies, had leaped into
control, for a moment, of his tongue and his senses, and in that moment
what had it done to his place in the estimation of the woman whom he
had helped on the Denver road?  Yet, who was she?  What connection had
she with the Rodaines?  And had she not herself done something which
had caused a fear of discovery should the pursuing sheriff overtake
her?  Bewildered, Robert Fairchild turned back to the more apparent
thing which faced him: the probable death of Harry--the man upon whom
he had counted for the knowledge and the perspicacity to aid him in the
struggle against Nature and against mystery--who now, according to the
story of Squint Rodaine, lay dead in the black waters of the Blue Poppy
shaft.

Carbide lights had begun to appear along the street, as miners,
summoned by hurrying gossip mongers, came forward to assist in the
search for the missing man.  High above the general conglomeration of
voices could be heard the cries of the instigator of activities, Sam
Herbenfelder, bemoaning the loss of his diamond, ninety per cent. of
the cost of which remained to be paid.  To Sam, the loss of Harry was a
small matter, but that loss entailed also the disappearance of a
yellow, carbon-filled diamond, as yet unpaid for.  His lamentations
became more vociferous than ever.  Fairchild went forward, and with an
outstretched hand grasped him by the collar.

"Why don't you wait until we 've found out something before you get the
whole town excited?" he asked.  "All we 've got is one man's word for
this."

"Yes," Sam spread his hands, "but look who it was!  Squint Rodaine!
Ach--will I ever get back that diamond?"

"I 'm starting to the mine," Fairchild released him.  "If you want to
go along and look for yourself, all right.  But wait until you 're sure
about the thing before you go crazy over it."

However, Sam had other thoughts.  Hastily he shot through the crowd,
organizing the bucket brigade and searching for news of the Argonaut
pump, which had not yet arrived.  Half-disgusted, Fairchild turned and
started up the hill, a few miners, their carbide lamps swinging beside
them, following him.  Far in the rear sounded the wails of Sam
Herbenfelder, organizing his units of search.

Fairchild turned at the entrance of the mine and waited for the first
of the miners and the accompanying gleam of his carbide.  Then, they
went within and to the shaft, the light shining downward upon the oily,
black water below.  Two objects floated there, a broken piece of
timber, torn from the side of the shaft, where some one evidently had
grasped hastily at it in an effort to stop a fall, and a new,
four-dented hat, gradually becoming water-soaked and sinking slowly
beneath the surface.  And then, for the first time, fear clutched at
Fairchild's heart,--fear which hope could not ignore.

"There 's his hat."  It was a miner staring downward.

Fairchild had seen it, but he strove to put aside the thought.

"True," he answered, "but any one could lose a hat, simply by looking
over the edge of the shaft."  Then, as if in proof of the forlorn hope
which he himself did not believe; "Harry 's a strong man.  Certainly he
would know how to swim.  And in any event he should have been able to
have kept afloat for at least a few minutes.  Rodaine says that he
heard a shout and ran right in here; but all that he could see was
ruffled water and a floating hat.  I--"  Then he paused suddenly.  It
had come to him that Rodaine might have helped in the demise of Harry!

Shouts sounded from outside, and the roaring of a motor truck as it
made its slow, tortuous way up the boulder-strewn road with its gullies
and innumerable ruts.  Voices came, rumbling and varied.  Lights.
Gaining the mouth of the tunnel.  Fairchild could see a mass of shadows
outlined by the carbides, all following the leadership of a small,
excited man, Sam Herbenfelder, still seeking his diamond.

The big pump from the Argonaut tunnel was aboard the truck, which was
followed by two other auto vehicles, each loaded with gasoline engines
and smaller pumps.  A hundred men were in the crowd, all equipped with
ropes and buckets.  Sam Herbenfelder's pleas had been heard.  The
search was about to begin for the body of Harry and the diamond that
circled one finger.  And Fairchild hastened to do his part.

Until far into the night they worked and strained to put the big pump
into position; while crews of men, four and five in a group, bailed
water as fast as possible, that the aggregate might be lessened to the
greatest possible extent before the pumps, with their hoses, were
attached.  Then the gasoline engines began to snort, great lengths of
tubing were let down into the shaft, and spurting water started down
the mountain side as the task of unwatering the shaft began.

But it was a slow job.  Morning found the distance to the water
lengthened by twenty or thirty feet, and the bucket brigades nearly at
the end of their ropes.  Men trudged down the hills to breakfast,
sending others in their places.  Fairchild stayed on to meet Mother
Howard and assuage her nervousness as best he could, dividing his time
between her and the task before him.  Noon found more water than ever
tumbling down the hills--the smaller pumps were working now in unison
with the larger one--for Sam Herbenfelder had not missed a single
possible outlet of aid in his campaign; every man in Ohadi with an
obligation to pay, with back interest due, or with a bill yet
unaccounted for was on his staff, to say nothing of those who had
volunteered simply to still the tearful remonstrances of the
hand-wringing, diamond-less, little jeweler.  Afternoon--and most of
Ohadi was there.  Fairchild could distinguish the form of Anita
Richmond in the hundreds of women and men clustered about the opening
of the tunnel, and for once she was not in the company of Maurice
Rodaine.  He hurried to her and she smiled at his approach.

"Have they found anything yet?"

"Nothing--so far.  Except that there is plenty of water in the shaft.
I 'm trying not to believe it."

"I hope it is n't true."  Her voice was low and serious.  "Father was
talking to me--about you.  And we hoped you two would succeed--this
time."

Evidently her father had told her more than she cared to relate.
Fairchild caught the inflection in her voice but disregarded it.

"I owe you an apology," he said bluntly.

"For what?"

"Last night.  I could n't resist it--I forgot for a moment that you
were there.  But I--I hope that you 'll believe me to be a gentleman,
in spite of it."

She smiled up at him quickly.

"I already have had proof of that.  I--I am only hoping that you will
believe me--well, that you 'll forget something."

"You mean--"

"Yes," she countered quickly, as though to cut off his explanation.
"It seemed like a great deal.  Yet it was nothing at all.  I would feel
much happier if I were sure you had disregarded it."

Fairchild looked at her for a long time, studying her with his serious,
blue eyes, wondering about many things, wishing that he knew more of
women and their ways.  At last he said the thing that he felt, the
straightforward outburst of a straightforward man:

"You 're not going to be offended if I tell you something?"

"Certainly not."

"The sheriff came along just after you had made the turn.  He was
looking for an auto bandit."

"A what?"  She stared at him with wide-open, almost laughing eyes.
"But you don't believe--"

"He was looking for a man," said Fairchild quietly.  "I--I told him
that I had n't seen anything but--a boy.  I was willing to do that
then--because I could n't believe that a girl like you would--"  Then
he stumbled and halted.  A moment he sought speech while she smiled up
at him.  Then out it came: "I--I don't care what it was.  I--I like
you.  Honest, I do.  I liked you so much when I was changing that tire
that I did n't even notice it when you put the money in my hand.
I--well, you 're not the kind of a girl who would do anything really
wrong.  It might be a prank--or something like that--but it would n't
be wrong.  So--so there 's an end to it."

Again she laughed softly, in a way tantalizing to Robert Fairchild, as
though she were making game of him.

"What do you know about women?" she asked finally, and Fairchild told
the truth:

"Nothing."

"Then--" the laugh grew heartier, finally, however, to die away.  The
girl put forth her hand.  "But I won't say what I was going to.  It
would n't sound right.  I hope that I--I live up to your estimation of
me.  At least--I 'm thankful to you for being the man you are.  And I
won't forget!"

And once more her hand had rested in his,--a small, warm, caressing
thing in spite of the purely casual grasp of an impersonal action.
Again Robert Fairchild felt a thrill that was new to him, and he stood
watching her until she had reached the motor car which had brought her
to the big curve, and had faded down the hill.  Then he went back to
assist the sweating workmen and the anxious-faced Sam Herbenfelder.
The water was down seventy feet.

That night Robert Fairchild sought a few hours' sleep.  Two days after,
the town still divided its attention between preparations for the Old
Times Dance and the progress in the dewatering of the Blue Poppy shaft.
Now and then the long hose was withdrawn, and dynamite lowered on
floats to the surface of the water, far below, a copper wire trailing
it.  A push of the plunger, a detonation, and a wait of long moments;
it accomplished nothing, and the pumping went on.  If the earthly
remains of Harry Harkins were below, they steadfastly refused to come
to the surface.

The volunteers had thinned now to only a few men at the pumps and the
gasoline engine, and Sam Herbenfelder was taking turns with Fairchild
in overseeing the job.  Spectators were not as frequent either; they
came and went,--all except Mother Howard, who was silently constant.
The water had fallen to the level of the drift, two hundred feet down;
the pumps now were working on the main flood which still lay below,
while outside the townspeople came and went, and twice daily the owner
and proprietor and general assignment reporter of the _Daily Bugle_
called at the mouth of the tunnel for news of progress.  But there was
no news, save that the water was lower.  The excitement of it began to
dim.  Besides, the night of the dance was approaching, and there were
other calls for volunteers, for men to set up the old-time bar in the
lodge rooms of the Elks Club; for others to dig out ancient roulette
wheels and oil them in preparation for a busy play at a ten-cent limit
instead of the sky-high boundaries of a day gone by; for some one to go
to Denver and raid the costume shops, to say nothing of buying the
innumerable paddles which must accompany any old-time game of keno.
But Sam stayed on--and Fairchild with him--and the loiterers, who would
refuse to work at anything else for less than six dollars a day, freely
giving their services at the pumps and the engines in return for a
share of Sam's good will and their names in the papers.

A day more and a day after that.  Through town a new interest spread.
The water was now only a few feet high in the shaft; it meant that the
whole great opening, together with the drift tunnel, soon would be
dewatered to an extent sufficient to permit of exploration.  Again the
motor cars ground up the narrow roadway.  Outside the tunnel the crowds
gathered.  Fairchild saw Anita Richmond and gritted his teeth at the
fact that young Rodaine accompanied her.  Farther in the background,
narrow eyes watching him closely, was Squint Rodaine.  And still
farther--

Fairchild gasped as he noticed the figure plodding down the mountain
side.  He put out a hand, then, seizing the nervous Herbenfelder by the
shoulder, whirled him around.

"Look!" he exclaimed.  "Look there!  Did n't I tell you!  Did n't I
have a hunch?"

For, coming toward them jauntily, slowly, was a figure in beaming blue,
a Fedora on his head now, but with the rest of his wardrobe intact,
yellow, bump-toed shoes and all.  Some one shouted.  Everybody turned.
And as they did so, the figure hastened its pace.  A moment later, a
booming voice sounded, the unmistakable voice of Harry Harkins:

"I sye!  What's the matter over there?  Did somebody fall in?"

The puffing of gasoline engines ceased.  A moment more and the gurgling
cough of the pumps was stilled, while the shouting and laughter of a
great crowd sounded through the hills.  A leaping form went forward,
Sam Herbenfelder, to seize Harry, to pat him and paw him, as though in
assurance that he really was alive, then to grasp wildly at the ring on
his finger.  But Harry waved him aside.

"Ain't I paid the installment on it?" he remonstrated.  "What's the
rumpus?"

Fairchild, with Mother Howard, both laughing happily, was just behind
Herbenfelder.  And behind them was thronging half of Ohadi.

"We thought you were drowned!"

"Me?"  Harry's laughter boomed again, in a way that was infectious.
"Me drowned, just because I let out a 'oller and dropped my 'at?"

"You did it on purpose?"  Sam Herbenfelder shook a scrawny fist under
Harry's nose.  The big Cornishman waved it aside as one would brush
away an obnoxious fly.  Then he grinned at the townspeople about him.

"Well," he confessed, "there was an un'oly lot of water in there, and I
didn't 'ave any money.  What else was I to do?"

"You--!"  A pumpman had picked up a piece of heavy timbering and thrown
it at him in mock ferocity.  "Work us to death and then come back and
give us the laugh!  Where you been at?"

"Center City," confessed Harry cheerily.

"And you knew all the time?"  Mother Howard wagged a finger under his
nose.

"Well," and the Cornishman chuckled, "I did n't 'ave any money.  I 'ad
to get that shaft unwatered, did n't I?"

"Get a rail!"  Another irate--but laughing--pumpman had come forward.
"Think you can pull that on us?  Get a rail!"

Some one seized a small, dead pine which lay on the ground near by.
Others helped to strip it of the scraggly limbs which still clung to
it.  Harry watched them and chuckled--for he knew that in none was
there malice.  He had played his joke and won.  It was their turn now.
Shouting in mock anger, calling for all dire things, from lynchings on
down to burnings at the stake, they dragged Harry to the pine tree,
threw him astraddle of it, then, with willing hands volunteering on
every side, hoisted the tree high above them and started down the
mountain side, Sam Herbenfelder trotting in the rear and forgetting his
anger in the joyful knowledge that his ring at last was safe.

Behind the throng of men with their mock threats trailed the women and
children, some throwing pine cones at the booming Harry, juggling
himself on the narrow pole; and in the crowd, Fairchild found some one
he could watch with more than ordinary interest,--Anita Richmond,
trudging along with the rest, apparently remonstrating with the sullen,
mean-visaged young man at her side.  Instinctively Fairchild knew that
young Rodaine was not pleased with the return of Harkins.  As for the
father--

Fairchild whirled at a voice by his side and looked straight into the
crooked eyes of Thornton Fairchild's enemy.  The blue-white scar had
turned almost black now, the eyes were red from swollen, blood-stained
veins, the evil, thin, crooked lips were working in sullen fury.  They
were practically alone at the mouth of the mine, Fairchild with a laugh
dying on his lips, Rodaine with all the hate and anger and futile
malice that a human being can know typified in his scarred, hawklike
features.  A thin, taloned hand came upward, to double, leaving one
bony, curved finger extending in emphasis of the words which streamed
from the slit of a mouth:

"Funny, weren't you?  Played your cheap jokes and got away with 'em.
But everybody ain't like them fools!" he pointed to the crowd just
rounding the rocks, Harry bobbing in the foreground.  "There 's some
that remember--and I 'm one of 'em.  You 've put over your fake; you
've had your laugh; you 've framed it so I 'll be the butt of every
numbskull in Ohadi.  But just listen to this--just listen to this!" he
repeated, the harsh voice taking on a tone that was almost a screech.
"There's another time coming--and that time 's going to be mine!"

And before Fairchild could retort, he had turned and was scrambling
down the mountain side.




CHAPTER IX

It was just as well.  Fairchild could have said nothing that would have
helped matters.  He could have done nothing that would have damaged
them.  The cards were still the same; the deck still bore its markings,
and the deal was going on without ever a change, except that now the
matter of concealment of enmities had turned to an open, aboveboard
proposition.  Whether Harry had so intended it or not, he had forced
Squint Rodaine to show his hand, and whether Squint realized it, that
amounted to something.  Fairchild was almost grateful for the fact as
he went back into the tunnel, spun the flywheels of the gasoline
engines and started them revolving again, that the last of the water
might be drained from the shaft before the pumps must be returned to
their owners.

Several hours passed, then Harry returned, minus his gorgeous clothing
and his diamond ring, dressed in mining costume now, with high leather
boots into which his trousers were tucked, and carrying a carbide
lantern.  Dolefully he looked at the vacant finger where once a diamond
had sparkled.  Then he chuckled.

"Sam took it back," he announced.  "And I took part of the money and
paid it out for rent on these pumps.  We can keep 'em as long as we
want 'em.  It's only costing about a fourth of what it might of.
Drowning 's worth something," he laughed again.  Fairchild joined him,
then sobered.

"It brought Rodaine out of the bushes," he said.  "Squint threatened us
after they 'd hauled you down town on the rail."

Harry winked jovially.

"Ain't it just what I expected?  It's better that wye than to 'ave 'im
snoopin' around.  When I came up to the mine, 'e was right behind me.
I knew it.  And I 'd figured on it.  So I just gave 'im something to
get excited about.  It was n't a minute after I 'd thrown a rock and my
'at in there and let out a yell that he came thumping in, looking
around.  I was 'iding back of the timbers there.  Out 'e went,
muttering to 'imself, and I--well, I went to Center City and read the
papers."

They chuckled together then; it was something to know that they had not
only forced Squint Rodaine to show his enmity openly, but it was
something more to make him the instrument of helping them with their
work.  The pumps were going steadily now, and a dirty stream of water
was flowing down the ditch that had been made at one side of the small
tram track.  Harry looked down the hole, stared intently at nothing,
then turned to the rusty hoist.

"'Ere 's the thing we 've got to fix up now.  This 'ere chiv wheel's
all out of gear."

"What makes your face so red?"  Fairchild asked the question as the
be-mustached visage of Harry came nearer to the carbide.  Harry looked
up.

"Mother 'Oward almost slapped it off!" came his rueful answer.  "For
not telling 'er what I was going to do, and letting 'er think I got
drownded.  But 'ow was I to know?"

He went to tinkering with the big chiv wheel then, supported on its
heavy timbers, and over which the cable must pass to allow the skip to
travel on its rails down the shaft.  Fairchild absently examined the
engines and pumps, supplying water to the radiators and filling an oil
cup or two.  Then he turned swiftly, voicing that which was uppermost
in his mind.

"When you were here before, Harry, did you know a Judge Richmond?"

"Yeh."  Harry pawed his mustache and made a greasy, black mark on his
face.  "But I don't think I want to know 'im now."

"Why not?"

"'E's mixed up with the Rodaines."

"How much?"

"They own 'im--that's all."

There was silence for a moment.  It had been something which Fairchild
had not expected.  If the Rodaines owned Judge Richmond, how far did
that ownership extend?  After a long time, he forced himself to a
statement.

"I know his daughter."

"You?"  Harry straightened.  "'Ow so?"

"She sold me a ticket to a dance," Fairchild carefully forgot the
earlier meeting.  "Then we 've happened to meet several times after
that.  She said that her father had told her about me--it seems he used
to be a friend of my own father."

Harry nodded.

"So 'e was.  And a good friend.  But that was before things
'appened--like they 've 'appened in the last ten years.  Not that I
know about it of my own knowledge.  But Mother 'Oward--she knows a lot."

"But what's caused the change?  What--?"

Harry's intent gaze stopped him.

"'Ow many times 'ave you seen the girl when she was n't with young
Rodaine?"

"Very few, that's true."

"And 'ow many times 'ave you seen Judge Richmond?"

"I have n't ever seen him."

"You won't--if Mother 'Oward knows anything.  'E ain't able to get out.
'E's sick--apoplexy--a stroke.  Rodaine's taken advantage of it."

"How?"

"'Ow does anybody take advantage of somebody that's sick?  'Ow does
anybody get a 'old on a person?  Through money!  Judge Richmond 'ad a
lot of it.  Then 'e got sick.  Rodaine, 'e got 'old of that money.  Now
Judge Richmond 'as to ask 'im for every penny he gets--and 'e does what
Rodaine says."

"But a judge--"

"Judges is just like anybody else when they're bedridden and only 'arf
their faculties working.  The girl, so Mother 'Oward tells me, is about
twenty now.  That made 'er just a little kid, and motherless, when
Rodaine got in 'is work.  She ain't got a thing to sye.  And she loves
'er father.  Suppose," Harry waved a hand, "that you loved somebody
awful strong, and suppose that person was under a influence?  Suppose
it meant 'is 'appiness and 'is 'ealth for you to do like 'e wanted you?
Wouldn't you go with a man?  What's more, if 'e don't die pretty soon,
you 'll see a wedding!"

"You mean--?"

"She 'll be Mrs. Maurice Rodaine.  She loves 'er father enough to do
it--after 'er will's broken.  And I don't care 'oo it is; there ain't a
woman in the world that's got the strength to keep on saying no to a
sick father!"

Again Robert Fairchild filled an oil cup, again he tinkered about the
pumps.  Then he straightened.

"How are we going to work this mine?" he asked shortly.  Harry stared
at him.

"'Ow should I know?  You own it!"

"I don't mean that way.  We were fifty-fifty from the minute you showed
up.  There never has been any other thought in my mind--"

"Fifty-fifty?  You're making me a bloated capitalist!"

"I hope I will.  Or rather, I hope that you 'll make such a thing
possible for both of us.  But I was talking about something else; are
we going to work hard and fight it out day and night for awhile until
we can get things going, or are we just going at it by easy stages?"

"Suppose," answered Harry after a communication with his magic
mustache, "that we go dye and night 'til we get the water out?  It
won't be long.  Then we 'll 'ave to work together.  You 'll need my
vast store of learning and enlightenment!" he grinned.

"Good.  But the pumping will last through tomorrow night.  Can you take
the night trick?"

"Sure.  But why?"

"I want to go to that dance!"

Harry whistled.  Harry's big lips spread into a grin.

"And she 's got brown eyes!" he chortled to himself.  "And she 's got
brown 'air, and she 's a wye about 'er.  Oh!  She's got a wye about
'er!  And I 'll bet she 's going with Maurice Rodaine!  Oh!  She's got
a wye about'er!"

"Oh, shut up!" growled Fairchild, but he grinned in schoolboy fashion
as he said it.  Harry poured half a can of oil upon the bearings of the
chiv wheel with almost loving tenderness.

"She 's got a wye about 'er!" he echoed.  Fairchild suddenly frowned.

"Just what do you mean?  That she 's in love with Rodaine and just--"

"'Ow should I know?  But she 's got a wye about 'er!"

"Well," the firm chin of the other man grew firmer, "it won't be hard
to find out!"

And the next night he started upon his investigations.  Nor did he stop
to consider that social events had been few and far between for him,
that his dancing had progressed little farther than the simple ability
to move his feet in unison to music.  Years of office and home, home
and office, had not allowed Robert Fairchild the natural advantages of
the usual young man.  But he put that aside now; he was going to that
dance, and he was going to stay there as long as the music sounded, or
rather as long as the brown eyes, brown hair and laughing lips of Anita
Richmond were apparent to him.  What's more, he carried out his
resolution.

The clock turned back with the entrance to that dance hall.  Men were
there in the rough mining costumes of other days, with unlighted
candles stuck through patent holders into their hats, and women were
there also, dressed as women could dress only in other days of sudden
riches, in costumes brought from Denver, bespangled affairs with the
gorgeousness piled on until the things became fantastic instead of the
intensely beautiful creations that the original wearers had believed
them to be.  There was only one idea in the olden mining days, to buy
as much as possible and to put it all on at once.  High, Spanish combs
surmounted ancient styles of hairdressing.  Rhinestones glittered in
lieu of the real diamonds that once were worn by the queens of the
mining camps.  Dancing girls, newly rich cooks, poverty-stricken
prospectors' wives suddenly beaming with wealth, nineteenth-century
vamps, gambling hall habitués,--all were represented among the
femininity of Ohadi as they laughed and giggled at the outlandish
costumes they wore and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Far at one side, making a brave effort with the "near" beer and "almost
there" concoctions of a prohibition buried country, was the
"old-fashioned bar" with its old-fashioned bartender behind it, roaring
out his orders and serving drinks with one hand while he waved and
pulled the trigger of a blank-cartridged revolver with the other.
Farther on was the roulette wheel, and Fairchild strolled to it,
watching the others to catch the drift of the game before he essayed
it, playing with pennies where, in the old days, men had gambled away
fortunes; surrounded by a crowd that laughed and chattered and forgot
its bets, around a place where once a "sleeper" might have meant a
fortune.  The spirit of the old times was abroad.  The noise and
clatter of a dance caller bellowed forth as he shouted for everybody to
grab their "podners one an' all, do-se-do, promenade th' hall!" and
Fairchild, as he watched, saw that his lack of dancing ability would
not be a serious handicap.  There were many others who did not know the
old numbers.  And those who did had worn their hobnailed boots,
sufficient to take the spring out of any one's feet.  The women were
doing most of the leading, the men clattered along somewhere in the
rear, laughing and shouting and inadvertently kicking one another on
the shins.  The old times had come back, boisterously, happily,--and
every one was living in those days when the hills gushed wealth, and
when poverty to-day might mean riches tomorrow.

Again and again Fairchild's eyes searched the crowds, the multicolored,
overdressed costumes of the women, the old-fashioned affairs with which
many of the men had arrayed themselves, ranging all the way from high
leather boots to frock suits and stovepipe beaver hats.  From one face
to another his gaze went; then he turned abstractedly to the long line
of tables, with their devotees of keno, and bought a paddle.

From far away the drone of the caller sounded in a voice familiar, and
Fairchild looked up to see the narrow-eyed, scarred face of Squint
Rodaine, who was officiating at the wheel.  He lost interest in the
game; lackadaisically he placed the buttons on their squares as the
numbers were shouted, finally to brush them all aside and desert the
game.  His hatred of the Rodaines had grown to a point where he could
enjoy nothing with which they were connected, where he despised
everything with which they had the remotest affiliation,--excepting, of
course, one person.  And as he rose, Fairchild saw that she was just
entering the dance hall.

Quaint in an old-fashioned costume which represented more the Civil War
days than it did those of the boom times of silver mining, she seemed
prettier than ever to Robert Fairchild, more girlish, more entrancing.
The big eyes appeared bigger now, peeping from the confines of a poke
bonnet; the little hands seemed smaller with their half-length gloves
and shielded by the enormous peacock feather fan they carried.  Only a
moment Fairchild hesitated.  Maurice Rodaine, attired in a mauve frock
suit and the inevitable accompanying beaver, had stopped to talk to
some one at the door.  She stood alone, looking about the hall,
laughing and nodding,--and then she looked at him!  Fairchild did not
wait.

From the platform at the end of the big room the fiddles had begun to
squeak, and the caller was shouting his announcements.  Couples began
to line up on the floor.  The caller's voice grew louder:

"Two more couples--two more couples!  Grab yo' podners!"

Fairchild was elbowing his way swiftly forward, apologizing as he went.
A couple took its place beside the others.  Once more the plea of the
caller sounded:

"One more couple--then the dance starts.  One more couple, lady an' a
gent!  One more--"

"Please!"  Robert Fairchild had reached her and was holding forth his
hand.  She looked up in half surprise, then demurred.

"But I don't know these old dances."

"Neither do I--or any other, for that matter," he confessed with sudden
boldness.  "But does that make any difference?  Please!"

She glanced quickly toward the door.  Maurice Rodaine was still
talking, and Fairchild saw a little gleam come into her eyes,--the
gleam that shows when a woman decides to make some one pay for
rudeness.  Again he begged:

"Won't you--and then we 'll forget.  I--I could n't take my payment in
money!"

She eyed him quickly and saw the smile on his lips.  From the platform
the caller voiced another entreaty:

"One more cou-ple!  Ain't there no lady an' gent that's goin' to fill
out this here dance?  One more couple--one more couple!"

Fairchild's hand was still extended.  Again Anita Richmond glanced
toward the door, chuckled to herself while Fairchild watched the
dimples that the merriment caused, and then--Fairchild forgot the fact
that he was wearing hobnailed shoes and that his clothes were worn and
old.  He was going forward to take his place on the dance floor, and
she was beside him!

Some way, as through a haze, he saw her.  Some way he realized that now
and then his hand touched hers, and that once, as they whirled about
the room, in obedience to the monarch on the fiddler's rostrum, his arm
was about her waist, and her head touching his shoulder.  It made
little difference whether the dance calls were obeyed after that.
Fairchild was making up for all the years he had plodded, all the years
in which he had known nothing but a slow, grubbing life, living them
all again and rightly, in the few swift moments of a dance.

The music ended, and laughing they returned to the side of the hall.
Out of the haze he heard words, and knew indistinctly that they were
his own:

"Will--will you dance with me again tonight?"

"Selfish!" she chided.

"But will you?"

For just a moment her eyes grew serious.

"Did you ever realize that we 've never been introduced?"

Fairchild was finding more conversation than he ever had believed
possible.

"No--but I realize that I don't care--if you 'll forgive it.
I--believe that I 'm a gentleman."

"So do I--or I would n't have danced with you."

"Then please--"

"Pardon me."  She had laid a hand on his arm for just a moment, then
hurried away.  Fairchild saw that she was approaching young Rodaine,
scowling in the background.  That person shot an angry remark at her as
she approached and followed it with streaming sentences.  Fairchild
knew the reason.  Jealousy!  Couples returning from the dance floor
jostled against him, but he did not move.  He was waiting--waiting for
the outcome of the quarrel--and in a moment it came.  Anita Richmond
turned swiftly, her dark eyes ablaze, her pretty lips set and firm.
She looked anxiously about her, sighted Fairchild, and then started
toward him, while he advanced to meet her.

"I 've reconsidered," was her brief announcement.  "I 'll dance the
next one with you."

"And the next after that?"

Again: "Selfish!"

But Fairchild did not appear to hear.

"And the next and the next and the next!" he urged as the caller issued
his inevitable invitations for couples.  Anita smiled.

"Maybe--I 'll think about it."

"I 'll never know how to dance, unless you teach me."  Fairchild
pleaded, as they made their way to the center of the floor.  "I 'll--"

"Don't work on my sympathies!"

"But it's the truth.  I never will."

"S'lute yo' podners!"  The dance was on.  And while the music squealed
from the rostrum, while the swaying forms some way made the rounds
according to the caller's viewpoint of an old-time dance, Anita
Richmond evidently "thought about it."  When the next dance came, they
went again on the floor together, Robert Fairchild and the brown-eyed
girl whom he suddenly realized he loved, without reasoning the past or
the future, without caring whom she might be or what her plans might
contain; a man out of prison lives by impulse, and Fairchild was but
lately released.

A third dance and a fourth, while in the intervals Fairchild's eyes
sought out the sulky, sullen form of Maurice Rodaine, flattened against
the wall, eyes evil, mouth a straight line, and the blackness of hate
discoloring his face.  It was as so much wine to Fairchild; he felt
himself really young for the first time in his life.  And as the music
started again, he once more turned to his companion.

Only, however, to halt and whirl and stare in surprise.  There had come
a shout from the doorway, booming, commanding:

"'Ands up, everybody!  And quick about it!"

Some one laughed and jabbed his hands into the air.  Another, quickly
sensing a staged surprise, followed the example.  It was just the
finishing touch necessary,--the old-time hold-up of the old-time dance.
The "bandit" strode forward.

"Out from be'ind that bar!  Drop that gun!" he commanded of the
white-aproned attendant.  "Out from that roulette wheel.  Everybody
line up!  Quick--and there ain't no time for foolin'."

Chattering and laughing, they obeyed, the sheriff, his star gleaming,
standing out in front of them all, shivering in mock fright, his hands
higher than any one's.  The bandit, both revolvers leveled, stepped
forward a foot or so, and again ordered speed.  Fairchild, standing
with his hands in the air, looked down toward Anita, standing beside
him.

"Is n't it exciting," she exclaimed.  "Just like a regular hold-up!  I
wonder who the bandit is.  He certainly looks the part, does n't he?"

And Fairchild agreed that he did.  A bandanna handkerchief was wrapped
about his head, concealing his hair and ears.  A mask was over his
eyes, supplemented by another bandanna, which, beginning at the bridge
of his nose, flowed over his chin, cutting off all possible chance of
recognition.  Only a second more he waited, then with a wave of the
guns, shouted his command:

"All right, everybody!  I'm a decent fellow.  Don't want much, but I
want it quick!  This 'ere 's for the relief of widders and orphans.
Make it sudden.  Each one of you gents step out to the center of the
room and leave five dollars.  And step back when you 've put it there.
Ladies stay where you 're at!"

Again a laugh.  Fairchild turned to his companion, as she nudged him.
"There, it's your turn."

Out to the center of the floor went Fairchild, the rest of the victims
laughing and chiding him.  Back he came in mock fear, his hands in the
air.  On down the line went the contributing men.  Then the bandit
rushed forward, gathered up the bills and gold pieces, shoved them in
his pockets, and whirled toward the door.

"The purpose of this 'ere will be in the paper to-morrow," he
announced.  "And don't you follow me to find out!  Back there!"

Two or three laughing men had started forward, among them a fiddler,
who had joined the line, and who now rushed out in flaunting bravery,
brandishing his violin as though to brain the intruder.  Again the
command:

"Back there--get back!"

Then the crowd recoiled.  Flashes had come from the masked man's guns,
the popping of electric light globes above and the showering of glass
testifying to the fact that they had contained something more than mere
wadding.  Somewhat dazed, the fiddler continued his rush, suddenly to
crumple and fall, while men milled and women screamed.  A door slammed,
the lock clicked, and the crowd rushed for the windows.  The hold-up
had been real after all,--instead of a planned, joking affair.  On the
floor the fiddler lay gasping--and bleeding.  And the bandit was gone.

All in a moment the dance hall seemed to have gone mad.  Men were
rushing about and shouting; panic-stricken women clawed at one another
and fought their way toward a freedom they could not gain.  Windows
crashed as forms hurtled against them; screams sounded.  Hurriedly, as
the crowd massed thicker, Fairchild raised the small form of Anita in
his arms and carried her to a chair, far at one side.

"It's all right now," he said, calming her.  "Everything 's over--look,
they 're helping the fiddler to his feet.  Maybe he 's not badly hurt.
Everything 's all right--"

And then he straightened.  A man had unlocked the door from the outside
and had rushed into the dance hall, excited, shouting.  It was Maurice
Rodaine.

"I know who it was," he almost screamed.  "I got a good look at
him--jumped out of the window and almost headed him off.  He took off
his mask outside--and I saw him."

"You saw him--?"  A hundred voices shouted the question at once.

"Yes."  Then Maurice Rodaine nodded straight toward Robert Fairchild.
"The light was good, and I got a straight look at him.  He was that
fellow's partner--a Cornishman they call Harry!"




CHAPTER X

"I don't believe it!" Anita Richmond exclaimed with conviction and
clutched at Fairchild's arm.  "I don't believe it!"

"I can't!" Robert answered.  Then he turned to the accuser.  "How could
it be possible for Harry to be down here robbing a dance hall when he
's out working the mine?"

"Working the mine?"  This time it was the sheriff.  "What's the
necessity for a day and night shift?"

The question was pertinent--and Fairchild knew it.  But he did not
hesitate.

"I know it sounds peculiar--but it's the truth.  We agreed upon it
yesterday afternoon."

"At whose suggestion?"

"I 'm not sure--but I think it was mine."

"Young fellow," the sheriff had approached him now, "you 'd better be
certain about that.  It looks to me like that might be a pretty good
excuse to give when a man can't produce an alibi.  Anyway, the
identification seems pretty complete.  Everybody in this room heard
that man talk with a Cousin Jack accent.  And Mr. Rodaine says that he
saw his face.  That seems conclusive."

"If Mr. Rodaine's word counts for anything."

The sheriff looked at him sharply.

"Evidently you have n't been around here long."  Then he turned to the
crowd.  "I want a couple of good men to go along with me as deputies."

"I have a right to go."  Fairchild had stepped forward.

"Certainly.  But not as a deputy.  Who wants to volunteer?"

Half a dozen men came forward, and from them the sheriff chose two.
Fairchild turned to say good-by to Anita.  In vain.  Already Maurice
Rodaine had escorted her, apparently against her will, to a far end of
the dance hall, and there was quarreling with her.  Fairchild hurried
to join the sheriff and his two deputies, just starting out of the
dance hall.  Five minutes later they were in a motor car, chugging up
Kentucky Gulch.

The trip was made silently.  There was nothing for Fairchild to say; he
had told all he knew.  Slowly, the motor car fighting against the
grade, the trip was accomplished.  Then the four men leaped from the
machine at the last rise before the tunnel was reached and three of
them went forward afoot toward where a slight gleam of light came from
the mouth of the Blue Poppy.

A consultation and then the creeping forms made the last fifty feet.
The sheriff took the lead, at last to stop behind a boulder and to
shout a command:

"Hey you, in there."

"'Ey yourself!" It was Harry's voice.

"Come out--and be quick about it.  Hold your light in front of your
face with both hands."

"The 'ell I will!  And 'oo 's talking?"

"Sheriff Adams of Clear Creek County.  You 've got one minute to come
out--or I 'll shoot."

"I 'm coming on the run!"

And almost instantly the form of Harry, his acetylene lamp lighting up
his bulbous, surprised countenance with its spraylike mustache,
appeared at the mouth of the tunnel.

"What the bloody 'ell?" he gasped, as he looked into the muzzle of the
revolver.  From down the mountain side came the shout of one of the
deputies:

"Sheriff!  Looks like it's him, all right.  I 've found a horse down
here--all sweated up from running."

"That's about the answer."  Sheriff Adams went forward and with a
motion of his revolver sent Harry's hands into the air.  "Let's see
what you 've got on you."

A light gleamed below as an electric flash in the hands of one of the
deputies began an investigation of the surroundings.  The sheriff,
finishing his search of 'Arry's pockets, stepped back.

"Well," he demanded, "what did you do with the proceeds?"

"The proceeds?"  Harry stared blankly.  "Of what?"

"Quit your kidding now.  They 've found your horse down there."

"Would n't it be a good idea--" Fairchild had cut in acridly--"to save
your accusations on this thing until you're a little surer of it?
Harry has n't any horse.  If he 's rented one, you ought to be able to
find that out pretty shortly."

As if in answer, the sheriff turned and shouted a question down the
mountain side.  And back came the answer:

"It's Doc Mason's.  Must have been stolen.  Doc was at the dance."

"I guess that settles it."  The officer reached for his hip pocket.
"Stick out your hands, Harry, while I put the cuffs on them."

"But 'ow in bloody 'ell 'ave I been doing anything when I 've been up
'ere working on this chiv wheel?  'Ow--?"

"They say you held up the dance to-night and robbed us," Fairchild cut
in.  Harry's face lost its surprised look, to give way to a glance of
keen questioning.

"And do you say it?"

"I most certainly do not.  The identification was given by that
honorable person known as Mr. Maurice Rodaine."

"Oh!  One thief identifying another--"

"Just cut your remarks along those lines."

"Sheriff!"  Again the voice from below.

"Yeh!"

"We 've found a cache down here.  Must have been made in a hurry--two
new revolvers, bullets, a mask, a couple of new handkerchiefs and the
money."

Harry's eyes grew wide.  Then he stuck out his hands.

"The evidence certainly is piling up!" he grunted.  "I might as well
save my talking for later."

"That's a good idea."  The sheriff snapped the handcuffs into place.
Then Fairchild shut off the pumps and they started toward the machine.
Back in Ohadi more news awaited them.  Harry, if Harry had been the
highwayman, had gone to no expense for his outfit.  The combined
general store and hardware emporium of Gregg Brothers had been robbed
of the articles necessary for a disguise,--also the revolvers and their
bullets.  Robert Fairchild watched Harry placed in the solitary cell of
the county jail with a spirit that could not respond to the
Cornishman's grin and his assurances that morning would bring a
righting of affairs.  Four charges hung heavy above him: that of
horse-stealing, of burglary, of highway robbery, and worse, the final
one of assault with attempt to kill.  Fairchild turned wearily away; he
could not find the optimism to join Harry's cheerful announcement that
it would be "all right."  The appearances were otherwise.  Besides, up
in the little hospital on the hill, Fairchild had seen lights gleaming
as he entered the jail, and he knew that doctors were working there
over the wounded body of the fiddler.  Tired, heavy at heart, his
earlier conquest of the night sodden and overshadowed now, he turned
away from the cell and its optimistic occupant,--out into the night.

It was only a short walk to the hospital and Fairchild went there, to
leave with at least a ray of hope.  The probing operation had been
completed; the fiddler would live, and at least the charge against
Harry would not be one of murder.  That was a thing for which to be
thankful; but there was plenty to cause consternation, as Fairchild
walked slowly down the dark, winding street toward the main
thoroughfare.  Without Harry, Fairchild now felt himself lost.  Before
the big, genial, eccentric Cornishman had come into his life, he had
believed, with some sort of divine ignorance, that he could carry out
his ambitions by himself, with no knowledge of the technical details
necessary to mining, with no previous history of the Blue Poppy to
guide him, and with no help against the enemies who seemed everywhere.
Now he saw that it was impossible.  More, the incidents of the night
showed how swiftly those enemies were working, how sharp and
stiletto-like their weapons.

That Harry was innocent was certain,--to Robert Fairchild.  There was
quite a difference between a joke which a whole town recognized as such
and a deliberate robbery which threatened the life of at least one man.
Fairchild knew in his heart that Harry was not built along those lines.

Looking back over it now, Fairchild could see how easily Fate had
played into the hands of the Rodaines, if the Rodaines had not
possessed a deeper concern than merely to seize upon a happening and
turn it to their own account.  The highwayman was big.  The highwayman
talked with a "Cousin-Jack" accent,--for all Cornishmen are "Cousin
Jacks" in the mining country.  Those two features in themselves,
Fairchild thought, as he stumbled along in the darkness, were
sufficient to start the scheming plot in the brain of Maurice Rodaine,
already ugly and evil through the trick played by Harry on his father
and the rebuke that had come from Anita Richmond.  It was an easy
matter for him to get the inspiration, leap out of the window, and then
wait until the robber had gone, that he might flare forth with his
accusation.  And after that--.

Either Chance, or something stronger, had done the rest.  The finding
of the stolen horse and the carelessly made cache near the mouth of the
Blue Poppy mine would be sufficient in the eyes of any jury.  The
evidence was both direct and circumstantial.  To Fairchild's mind,
there was small chance for escape by Harry, once his case went to
trial.  Nor did the pounding insistence of intuitive knowledge that the
whole thing had been a deliberately staged plot on the part of the
Rodaines, father and son, make the slightest difference in Fairchild's
estimation.  How could he prove it?  By personal animosity?  There was
the whole town of Ohadi to testify that the highwayman was a big man,
of the build of Harry, and that he spoke with a Cornish accent.  There
were the sworn members of the posse to show that they, without
guidance, had discovered the horse and the cache,--and the Rodaines
were nowhere about to help them.  And experience already had told
Fairchild that the Rodaines, by a deliberately constructed system, held
a ruling power; that against their word, his would be as nothing.
Besides, where would be Harry's alibi?  He had none; he had been at the
mine, alone.  There was no one to testify for him, not even Fairchild.

The world was far from bright.  Down the dark street the man wandered,
his hands sunk deep in his pockets, his head low between his
shoulders,--only to suddenly galvanize into intensity, and to stop
short that he might hear again the voice which had come to him.  At one
side was a big house,--a house whose occupants he knew instinctively,
for he had seen the shadow of a woman, hands outstretched, as she
passed the light-strewn shade of a window on the second floor.  More,
he had heard her voice, supplemented by gruffer tones.  And then it
came again.

It was pleading, and at the same time angered with the passion of a
person approaching hysteria.  A barking sentence answered her,
something that Fairchild could not understand.  He left the old board
sidewalk and crept to the porch that he might hear the better.  Then
every nerve within him jangled, and the black of the darkness changed
to red.  The Rodaines were within; he had heard first the cold voice of
the father, then the rasping tones of the son, in upbraiding.  More,
there had come the sobbing of a woman; instinctively Fairchild knew
that it was Anita Richmond.  And then:

It was her voice, high, screaming.  Hysteria had come,--the wild,
racking hysteria of a person driven to the breaking point:

"Leave this house--hear me!  Leave this house!  Can't you see that
you're killing him?  Don't you dare touch me--leave this house!  No--I
won't be quiet--I won't--you 're killing him, I tell you--!"

And Fairchild waited for nothing more.  A lunge, and he was on the
veranda.  One more spring and he had reached the door, to find it
unlocked, to throw it wide and to leap into the hall.  Great steps, and
he had cleared the stairs to the second floor.

A scream came from a doorway before him; dimly, as through a red
screen, Fairchild saw the frightened face of Anita Richmond, and on the
landing, fronting him angrily, stood the two Rodaines.  For a moment,
Fairchild disregarded them and turned to the sobbing, disheveled little
being in the doorway.

"What's happened?"

"They were threatening me--and father!" she moaned.  "But you shouldn't
have come in--you should n't have--"

"I heard you scream.  I could n't help it.  I heard you say they were
killing your father--"

The girl looked anxiously toward an inner room, where Fairchild could
see faintly the still figure of a man outlined under the covers of an
old-fashioned four-poster.

"They--they--got him excited.  He had another stroke.  I--I could n't
stand it any longer."

"You 'd better get out," said Fairchild curtly to the Rodaines, with a
suggestive motion toward the stairs.  They hesitated a moment and
Maurice seemed about to launch himself at Robert, but his father laid a
restraining hand on his arm.  A step and the elder Rodaine hesitated.

"I 'm only going because of your father," he said gruffly, with a
glance toward Anita.

Fairchild knew differently, but he said nothing.  The gray of Rodaine's
countenance told where his courage lay; it was yellow gray, the dirty
gray of a man who fights from cover, and from cover only.

"Oh, I know," Anita said.  "It's--it's all right.  I--I 'm sorry.
I--did n't realize that I was screaming--please forgive me--and go,
won't you?  It means my father's life now."

"That's the only reason I am going; I 'm not going because--"

"Oh, I know.  Mr. Fairchild should n't have come in here.  He should
n't have done it.  I 'm sorry--please go."

Down the steps they went, the older man with his hand still on his
son's arm; while, white-faced, Fairchild awaited Anita, who had
suddenly sped past him into the sick room, then was wearily returning.

"Can I help you?" he asked at last.

"Yes," came her rather cold answer, only to be followed by a quickly
whispered "Forgive me."  And then the tones became louder--so that they
could be heard at the bottom of the stairs: "You can help me
greatly--simply by going and not creating any more of a disturbance."

"But--"

"Please go," came the direct answer.  "And please do not vent your
spite on Mr. Rodaine and his son.  I 'm sure that they will act like
gentlemen if you will.  You should n't have rushed in here."

"I heard you screaming, Miss Richmond."

"I know," came her answer, as icily as ever.  Then the door downstairs
closed and the sound of steps came on the veranda.  She leaned close to
him.  "I had to say that," came her whispered words.  "Please don't try
to understand anything I do in the future.  Just go--please!"

And Fairchild obeyed.




CHAPTER XI

The Rodaines were on the sidewalk when Fairchild came forth from the
Richmond home, and true to his instructions from the frightened girl,
he brushed past them swiftly and went on down the street, not turning
at the muttered invectives which came from the crooked lips of the
older man, not seeming even to notice their presence as he hurried on
toward Mother Howard's boarding house.  Whether Fate had played with
him or against him, he did not know,--nor could he summon the brain
power to think.  Happenings had come too thickly in the last few hours
for him to differentiate calmly; everything depended upon what course
the Rodaines might care to pursue.  If theirs was to be a campaign of
destruction, without a care whom it might involve, Fairchild could see
easily that he too might soon be juggled into occupying the cell with
Harry in the county jail.  Wearily he turned the corner to the main
street and made his plodding way, along it, his shoulders drooping, his
brain fagged from the flaring heat of anger and the strain that the
events of the night had put upon it.  In his creaky bed in the old
boarding house, he again sought to think, but in vain.  He could only
lie awake and stare into the darkness about him, while through his mind
ran a muddled conglomeration of foreboding, waking dreams, revamps of
the happenings of the last three weeks, memories which brought him
nothing save sleeplessness and the knowledge that, so far, he fought a
losing fight.

After hours, daylight began to streak the sky.  Fairchild, dull, worn
by excitement and fatigue, strove to rise, then laid his head on the
pillow for just a moment of rest.  And with that perversity which
extreme weariness so often exerts, his eyes closed, and he slept,--to
wake at last with the realization that it was late morning, and that
some one was pounding on the door.  Fairchild raised his head.

"Is that you, Mother Howard?  I'm getting up, right away."

A slight chuckle answered him.

"But this is n't Mother Howard.  May I see you a moment?"

"Who is it?"

"No one you know--yet.  I 've come to talk to you about your partner.
May I come in?"

"Yes."  Fairchild was fully alive now to the activities that the day
held before him.  The door opened, and a young man, alert, almost cocky
in manner, with black, snappy eyes showing behind horn-rimmed glasses,
entered and reached for the sole chair that the room contained.

"My name 's Farrell," he announced.  "Randolph P. Farrell.  And to make
a long story short, I 'm your lawyer."

"My lawyer?" Fairchild stared.  "I haven't any lawyer in Ohadi.  The
only--"

"That does n't alter the fact.  I 'm your lawyer, and I 'm at your
service.  And I don't mind telling you that it's just about my first
case.  Otherwise, I don't guess I 'd have gotten it."

"Why not?"  The frankness had driven other queries from Fairchild's
mind.  Farrell, the attorney, grinned cheerily.

"Because I understand it concerns the Rodaines.  Nobody but a fool out
of college cares to buck up against them.  Besides, nearly everybody
has a little money stuck into their enterprises.  And seeing I have no
money at all, I 'm not financially interested.  And not being
interested, I 'm wholly just, fair and willing to fight 'em to a
standstill.  Now what's the trouble?  Your partner 's in jail, as I
understand it.  Guilty or not guilty?"

"Wa--wait a minute!"  The breeziness of the man had brought Fairchild
to more wakefulness and to a certain amount of cheer.  "Who hired you?"
Then with a sudden inspiration: "Mother Howard did n't go and do this?"

"Mother Howard?  You mean the woman who runs the boarding house?  Not
at all."

"But--"

"I 'm not exactly at liberty to state."

Suspicion began to assert itself.  The smile of comradeship that the
other man's manner instilled faded suddenly.

"Under those conditions, I don't believe--"

"Don't say it!  Don't get started along those lines.  I know what you
're thinking.  Knew that was what would happen from the start.  And
against the wishes of the person who hired me for this work, I--well, I
brought the evidence.  I might as well show it now as try to put over
this secret stuff and lose a lot of time doing it.  Here, take a
glimpse and then throw it away, tear it up, swallow it, or do anything
you want to with it, just so nobody else sees it.  Ready?  Look."

He drew forth a small visiting card.  Fairchild glanced.  Then he
looked--and then he sat up straight in bed.  For before him were the
engraved words:

  Miss Anita Natalie Richmond.


While across the card was hastily written, in a hand distinctively
feminine:


Mr. Fairchild: This is my good friend.  He will help you.  There is no
fee attached.  Please destroy.

Anita Richmond.


"Bu--but I don't understand."

"You know Miss--er--the writer of this card, don't you?"

"But why should she--?"

Mr. Farrell, barrister-at-law, grinned broadly.

"I see you don't know Miss--the writer of this card at all.  That's her
nature.  Besides--well, I have a habit of making long stories short.
All she 's got to do with me is crook her finger and I 'll jump
through.  I 'm--none of your business.  But, anyway, here I am--"

Fairchild could not restrain a laugh.  There was something about the
man, about his nervous, yet boyish way of speaking, about his
enthusiasm, that wiped out suspicion and invited confidence.  The owner
of the Blue Poppy mine leaned forward.

"But you did n't finish your sentence about--the writer of that card."

"You mean--oh--well, there 's nothing to that.  I 'm in love with her.
Been in love with her since I 've been knee-high to a duck.  So 're
you.  So 's every other human being that thinks he's a regular man.
So's Maurice Rodaine.  Don't know about the rest of you--but I have n't
got a chance.  Don't even think of it any more--look on it as a
necessary affliction, like wearing winter woolens and that sort of
thing.  Don't let it bother you.  The problem right now is to get your
partner out of jail.  How much money have you got?"

"Only a little more than two thousand."

"Not enough.  There 'll be bonds on four charges.  At the least, they
'll be around a thousand dollars apiece.  Probabilities are that they
'll run around ten thousand for the bunch.  How about the Blue Poppy?"

Fairchild shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know what it's worth."

"Neither do I.  Neither does the judge.  Neither does any one else.
Therefore, it's worth at least ten thousand dollars.  That 'll do the
trick.  Get out your deeds and that sort of thing--we 'll have to file
them with the bond as security."

"But that will ruin us!"

"How so?  A bond 's nothing more than a mortgage.  It doesn't stop you
from working on the mine.  All it does is give evidence that your
friend and partner will be on the job when the bailiff yells oyez,
oyez, oyez.  Otherwise, they 'll take the mine away from you and sell
it at public sale for the price of the bond.  But that's a happen-so of
the future.  And there 's no danger if our client--you will notice that
I call him our client--is clothed with the dignity and the protecting
mantle of innocence and stays here to see his trial out."

"He 'll do that, all right."

"Then we 're merely using the large and ample safe of the court of this
judicial district as a deposit vault for some very valuable papers.  I
'd suggest now that you get up, seize your deeds and accompany me to
the palace of justice.  Otherwise, that partner of yours will have to
eat dinner in a place called in undignified language the hoosegow!"

It was like warm sunshine on a cold day, the chatter of this young man
in horn-rimmed glasses.  Soon Fairchild was dressed and walking
hurriedly up the street with the voluble attorney.  A half-hour more
and they were before the court.  Fairchild, the lawyer and the
jail-worn Harry, his mustache fluttering in more directions than ever.

"Not guilty, Your Honor," said Randolph P. Farrell.  "May I ask the
extent of the bond?"

The judge adjusted his glasses and studied the information which the
district attorney had laid before him.

"In view of the number of charges and the seriousness of each, I must
fix an aggregate bond of five thousand dollars, or twelve hundred fifty
dollars for each case."

"Thank you; we had come prepared for more.  Mr. Fairchild, who is Mr.
Harkins' partner, is here to appear as bondsman.  The deeds are in his
name alone, the partnership existing, as I understand it, upon their
word of honor between them.  I refer, Your Honor, to the deeds of the
Blue Poppy mine.  Would Your Honor care to examine them?"

His Honor would.  His Honor did.  For a long moment he studied them,
and Fairchild, in looking about the courtroom, saw the bailiff in
conversation with a tall, thin man, with squint eyes and a scar-marked
forehead.  A moment later, the judge looked over his glasses.

"Bailiff!"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Have you any information regarding the value of the Blue Poppy mining
claims?"

"Sir, I have just been talking to Mr. Rodaine.  He says they 're well
worth the value of the bond."

"How about that, Rodaine?"  The judge peered down the court room.
Squint Rodaine scratched his hawklike nose with his thumb and nodded.

"They 'll do," was his answer, and the judge passed the papers to the
clerk of the court.

"Bond accepted.  I 'll set this trial for--"

"If Your Honor please, I should like it at the very, very earliest
possible moment," Randolph P. Farrell had cut in.  "This is working a
very great hardship upon an innocent man and--"

"Can't be done."  The judge was scrawling on his docket.  "Everything
's too crowded.  Can't be reached before the November term.  Set it for
November 11th."

"Very well, Your Honor."  Then he turned with a wide grin to his
clients.  "That's all until November."

Out they filed through the narrow aisle of the court room, Fairchild's
knee brushing the trouser leg of Squint Rodaine as they passed.  At the
door, the attorney turned toward them, then put forth a hand.

"Drop in any day this week and we 'll go over things," he announced
cheerfully.  "We put one over on his royal joblots that time, anyway.
Hates me from the ground up.  Worst we can hope for is a conviction and
then a Supreme Court reversal.  I 'll get him so mad he 'll fill the
case with errors.  He used to be an instructor down at Boulder, and I
stuck the pages of a lecture together on him one day.  That's why I
asked for an early trial.  Knew he 'd give me a late one.  That 'll let
us have time to stir up a little favorable evidence, which right now we
don't possess.  Understand--all money that comes from the mine is held
in escrow until this case is decided.  But I 'll explain that.  Going
to stick around here and bask in the effulgence of really possessing a
case.  S'long!"

And he turned back into the court room, while Fairchild, the dazed
Harry stalking beside him, started down the street.

"'Ow do you figure it?" asked the Cornishman at last.

"What?"

"Rodaine.  'E 'elped us out!"

Fairchild stopped.  It had not occurred to him before.  But now he saw
it: that if Rodaine, as an expert on mining, had condemned the Blue
Poppy, it could have meant only one thing, the denial of bond by the
judge and the lack of freedom for Harry.  Fairchild rubbed a hand
across his brow.

"I can't figure it," came at last.  "And especially since his son is
the accuser and since I got the best of them both last night!"

"Got the best of 'em?  You?"

The story was brief in its telling.  And it brought no explanation of
the sudden amiability displayed by the crooked-faced Rodaine.  They
went on, striving vainly for a reason, at last to stop in front of the
post-office, as the postmaster leaned out of the door.

"Your name's Fairchild, isn't it?" asked the person of letters, as he
fastened a pair of gimlet eyes on the owner of the Blue Poppy.

"Yes."

"Thought so.  Some of the fellows said you was.  Better drop in here
for your mail once in a while.  There 's been a letter for you here for
two days!"

"For me?"  Vaguely Fairchild went within and received the missive, a
plain, bond envelope without a return address.  He turned it over and
over in his hand before he opened it--then looked at the
postmark,--Denver.  At last:

"Open it, why don't you?"

Harry's mustache was tickling his ear, as the big miner stared over his
shoulder.  Fairchild obeyed.  They gasped together.  Before them were
figures and sentences which blurred for a moment, finally to resolve
into:


Mr. Robert Fairchild,
  Ohadi, Colorado.

Dear Sir;

I am empowered by a client whose name I am not at liberty to state, to
make you an offer of $50,000. for your property in Clear Creek County,
known as the Blue Poppy mine.  In replying, kindly address your letter
to

Box 180, Denver, Colo.


Harry whistled long and thoughtfully.

"That's a 'ole lot of money!"

"An awful lot, Harry.  But why was the offer made?  There 's nothing to
base it on.  There 's--"

Then for a moment, as they stepped out of the post-office, he gave up
the thought, even of comparative riches.  Twenty feet away, a man and a
girl were approaching, talking as though there never had been the
slightest trouble between them.  They crossed the slight alleyway, and
she laid her hand on his arm, almost caressingly, Fairchild thought,
and he stared hard as though in unbelief of their identity.  But it was
certain.  It was Maurice Rodaine and Anita Richmond; they came closer,
her eyes turned toward Fairchild, and then--

She went on, without speaking, without taking the trouble to notice,
apparently, that he had been standing there.




CHAPTER XII

After this, there was little conversation until Harry and Fairchild had
reached the boarding house.  Then, with Mother Howard for an adviser,
the three gathered in the old parlor, and Fairchild related the events
of the night before, adding what had happened at the post-office, when
Anita had passed him without speaking.  Mother Howard, her arms folded
as usual, bobbed her gray head.

"It's like her, Son," she announced at last.  "She 's a good girl.  I
've known her ever since she was a little tad not big enough to walk.
And she loves her father."

"But--"

"She loves her father.  Is n't that enough?  The Rodaines have the
money--and they have almost everything that Judge Richmond owns.  It's
easy enough to guess what they 've done with it--tied it up so that he
can't touch it until they 're ready for him to do it.  And they 're not
going to do that until they 've gotten what they want."

"Which is--?"

"Anita!  Any fool ought to be able to know that.  Of course," she added
with an acrid smile, "persons that are so head over heels in love
themselves that they can't see ten feet in front of them would n't be
able to understand it--but other people can.  The Rodaines know they
can't do anything directly with Anita.  She would n't stand for it.
She 's not that kind of a girl.  They know that money does n't mean
anything to her--and what's more, they 've been forced to see that
Anita ain't going to turn handsprings just for the back-action honor of
marrying a Rodaine.  Anita could marry a lot richer fellows than
Maurice Rodaine ever dreamed of being, if she wanted to--and there
wouldn't be any scoundrel of a father, or any graveyard wandering,
crazy mother to go into the bargain.  And they realize it.  But they
realize too, that there ain't a chance of them losing out as long as
her father's happiness depends on doing what they want her to do.  So,
after all, ain't it easy to see the whole thing?"

"To you, possibly.  But not to me."

Mother Howard pressed her lips in exasperation.

"Just go back over it," she recapitulated.  "She got mad at him at the
dance last night, did n't she?  He 'd done something rude--from the way
you tell it.  Then you sashayed up and asked her to dance every dance
with you.  You don't suppose that was because you were so tall and
handsome, do you?"

"Well--" Fairchild smiled ruefully--"I was hoping that it was because
she rather liked me."

"Suppose it was?  But she rather likes a lot of people.  You understand
women just like a pig understands Sunday--you don't know anything about
'em.  She was mad at Maurice Rodaine and she wanted to give him a
lesson.  She never thought about the consequences.  After the dance was
over, just like the sniveling little coward he is, he got his father
and went to the Richmond house.  There they began laying out the old
man because he had permitted his daughter to do such a disgraceful
thing as to dance with a man she wanted to dance with instead of
kowtowing and butting her head against the floor every time Maurice
Rodaine crooked his finger.  And they were n't gentle about it.  What
was the result?  Poor old Judge Richmond got excited and had another
stroke.  And what did Anita do naturally--just like a woman?  She got
the high-strikes and then you came rushing in.  After that, she calmed
down and had a minute to think of what might be before her.  That
stroke last night was the second one for the Judge.  There usually
ain't any more after the third one.  Now, can't you see why Anita is
willing to do anything on earth just to keep peace and just to give her
father a little rest and comfort and happiness in the last days of his
life?  You 've got to remember that he ain't like an ordinary father
that you can go to and tell all your troubles.  He 's laying next door
to death, and Anita, just like any woman that's got a great, big, good
heart in her, is willing to face worse than death to help him.  It's as
plain to me as the nose on Harry's face."

"Which is quite plain," agreed Fairchild ruefully.  Harry rubbed the
libeled proboscis, pawed at his mustache and fidgeted in his chair.

"I understand that, all right," he announced at last.  "But why should
anybody want to buy the mine?"

It brought Fairchild to the realization of a new development, and he
brought forth the letter, once more to stare at it.

"Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money," came at last.  "It would
pretty near pay us for coming out here, Harry."

"That it would."

"And what then?"  Mother Howard, still looking through uncolored
glasses, took the letter and scanned it.  "You two ain't quitters, are
you?"

"'Oo, us?" Harry bristled.

"Yes, you.  If you are, get yourselves a piece of paper and write to
Denver and take the offer.  If you ain't--keep on fighting."

"I believe you 're right, Mother Howard."

Fairchild had reached for the letter again and was staring at it as
though for inspiration.  "That amount of money seems to be a great
deal.  Still, if a person will offer that much for a mine when there 's
nothing in sight to show its value, it ought to mean that there's
something dark in the woodpile and that the thing 's worth fighting
out.  And personally speaking, I 'm willing to fight!"

"I never quit in my life!"  Harry straightened in his chair and his
mustache stuck forth pugnaciously.  Mother Howard looked down at him,
pressed her lips, then smiled.

"No," she announced, "except to run away like a whipped pup after you
'd gotten a poor lonely boarding-house keeper in love with you!"

"Mother 'Oward, I 'll--"

But the laughing, gray-haired woman had scrambled through the doorway
and slammed the door behind her, only to open it a second later and
poke her head within.

"Need n't think because you can hold up a dance hall and get away with
it, you can use cave-man stuff on me!" she admonished.  And in that one
sentence was all the conversation necessary regarding the charges
against Harry, as far as Mother Howard was concerned.  She did n't
believe them, and Harry's face showed that the world had become bright
and serene again.  He swung his great arms as though to loosen the big
muscles of his shoulders.  He pecked at his mustache.  Then he turned
to Fairchild.

"Well," he asked, "what do we do?  Go up to the mine--just like nothing
'ad ever 'appened?"

"Exactly.  Wait until I change my clothes.  Then we 'll be ready to
start.  I 'm not even going to dignify this letter by replying to it.
And for one principal reason--" he added--"that I think the Rodaines
have something to do with it."

'"Ow so?"

"I don't know.  It's only a conjecture; I guess the connection comes
from the fact that Squint put a good valuation on the mine this morning
in court.  And if it is any of his doings--then the best thing in the
world is to forget it.  I 'll be ready in a moment."

An hour later they entered the mouth of the Blue Poppy tunnel, once
more to start the engines and to resume the pumping, meanwhile
struggling back and forth with timbers from the mountain side, as they
began the task of rehabilitating the tunnel where it had caved in just
beyond the shaft.  It was the beginning of a long task; well enough
they knew that far below there would be much more of this to do, many
days of back-breaking labor in which they must be the main
participants, before they ever could hope to begin their real efforts
in search of ore.

And so, while the iron-colored water gushed from the pump tubes.  Harry
and Fairchild made their trips, scrambling ones as they went outward,
struggling ones as they came back, dragging the "stulls" or heavy
timbers which would form the main supports, the mill-stakes, or lighter
props, the laggs and spreaders, all found in the broken, well-seasoned
timber of the mountain side, all necessary for the work which was
before them.  The timbering of a mine is not an easy task.  One by one
the heavy props must be put into place, each to its station, every one
in a position which will furnish the greatest resistance against the
tremendous weight from above, the constant inclination of the earth to
sink and fill the man-made excavations.  For the earth is a jealous
thing; its own caverns it makes and preserves judiciously.  Those made
by the hand of humanity call forth the resistance of gravity and of
disintegration, and it takes measures of strength and power to combat
them.  That day, Harry and Fairchild worked with all their strength at
the beginning of a stint that would last--they did not, could not know
how long.  And they worked together.  Their plan of a day and night
shift had been abandoned; the trouble engendered by their first attempt
had been enough to shelve that sort of program.

Hour after hour they toiled, until the gray mists hung low over the
mountain tops, until the shadows lengthened and twilight fell.  The
engines ceased their chugging, the coughing swirl of the dirty water as
it came from the drift, far below, stopped.  Slowly two weary men
jogged down the rutty road to the narrow, winding highway which led
through Kentucky Gulch and into town.  But they were happy with a new
realization: that they were actively at work, that something had been
accomplished by their labors, and progress made in spite of the
machinations of malignant men, in spite of the malicious influences of
the past and of the present, and in spite of the powers of Nature.

It was a new, a grateful life to Fairchild.  It gave him something else
to think about than the ponderings upon the mysterious events which
seemed to whirl, like a maelstrom, about him.  And more, it gave him
little time to think at all, for that night he did not lie awake to
stare about him in the darkness.  Muscles were aching in spite of their
inherent strength.  His head pounded from the pressure of intensified
heart action.  His eyes closed wearily, yet with a wholesome fatigue.
Nor did he wake until Harry was pounding on the door in the dawn of the
morning.

Their meal came before the dining room was regularly open.  Mother
Howard herself flipping the flapjacks and frying the eggs which formed
their breakfast, meanwhile finding the time to pack their lunch
buckets.  Then out into the crisp air of morning they went, and back to
their labors.

Once more the pumps; once more the struggle against the heavy timbers;
once more the "clunk" of the axe as it bit deep into wood, or the
pounding of hammers as great spikes were driven into place.  Late that
afternoon they turned to a new duty,--that of mucking away the dirt and
rotted logs from a place that once had been impassable.  The timbering
of the broken-down portion of the tunnel just behind the shaft had been
repaired, and Harry flipped the sweat away from his broad forehead with
an action of relief.

"Not that it does us any particular good," he announced.  "There ain't
nothing back there that we can get at.  But it's room we 'll need when
we start working down below, and we might as well 'ave it fixed up--"

He ceased suddenly and ran to the pumps.  A peculiar gurgling sound had
come from the ends of the hose, and the flow depreciated greatly;
instead of the steady gush of water, a slimy silt was coming out now,
spraying and splattering about on the sides of the drainage ditch.
Wildly Harry waved a monstrous paw.

"Shut 'em off!" he yelled to Fairchild in the dimness of the tunnel.
"It's sucking the muck out of the sump!"

"Out of the what?"  Fairchild had killed the engines and run forward to
where Harry, one big hand behind the carbide flare, was peering down
the shaft.

"The sump--it's a little 'ole at the bottom of the shaft to 'old any
water that 'appens to seep in.  That means the 'ole drift is unwatered."

"Then the pumping job 's over?"

"Yeh."  Harry rose.  "You stay 'ere and dismantle the pumps, so we can
send 'em back.  I 'll go to town.  We 've got to buy some stuff."

Then he started off down the trail, while Fairchild went to his work.
And he sang as he dragged at the heavy hose, pulling it out of the
shaft and coiling it at the entrance to the tunnel, as he put skids
under the engines, and moved them, inch by inch, to the outer air.
Work was before him, work which was progressing toward a goal that he
had determined to seek, in spite of all obstacles.  The mysterious
offer which he had received gave evidence that something awaited him,
that some one knew the real value of the Blue Poppy mine, and that if
he could simply stick to his task, if he could hold to the unwavering
purpose to win in spite of all the blocking pitfalls that were put in
his path, some day, some time, the reward would be worth its price.

More, the conversation with Mother Howard on the previous morning had
been comforting; it had given a woman's viewpoint upon another woman's
actions.  And Fairchild intuitively believed she was correct.  True,
she had talked of others who might have hopes in regard to Anita
Richmond; in fact, Fairchild had met one of those persons in the
lawyer, Randolph Farrell.  But just the same it all was cheering.  It
is man's supreme privilege to hope.

And so Fairchild was happy and somewhat at ease for the first time in
weeks.  Out at the edge of the mine, as he made his trips, he stopped
now and then to look at something he had disregarded previously,--the
valley stretching out beneath him, the three hummocks of the far-away
range, named Father, Mother and Child by some romantic mountaineer; the
blue-gray of the hills as they stretched on, farther and farther into
the distance, gradually whitening until they resolved themselves into
the snowy range, with the gaunt, high-peaked summit of Mount Evans
scratching the sky in the distance.

There was a shimmer in the air, through which the trees were turned
into a bluer green, and the crags of the mountains made softer, the
gaping scars of prospect holes less lonely and less mournful with their
ever-present story of lost hopes.  On a great boulder far at one side a
chipmunk chattered.  Far down the road an ore train clattered along on
the way to the Sampler,--that great middleman institution which is a
part of every mining camp, and which, like the creamery station at the
cross roads, receives the products of the mines, assays them by its
technically correct system of four samples and four assayers to every
shipment, and buys them, with its allowances for freight, smelting
charges and the innumerable expenditures which must be made before
money can become money in reality.  Fairchild sang louder than ever, a
wordless tune, an old tune, engendered in his brain upon a
paradoxically happy and unhappy night,--that of the dance when he had
held Anita Richmond in his arms, and she had laughed up at him as, by
her companionship, she had paid the debt of the Denver road.  Fairchild
had almost forgotten that.  Now, with memory, his brow puckered, and
his song died slowly away.

"What the dickens was she doing?" he asked himself at last.  "And why
should she have wanted so terribly to get away from that sheriff?"

There was no answer.  Besides, he had promised to ask for none.  And
further, a shout from the road, accompanied by the roaring of a motor
truck, announced the fact that Harry was making his return.

Five men were with him, to help him carry in ropes, heavy pulleys,
weights and a large metal shaft bucket, then to move out the smaller of
the pumps and trundle away with them, leaving the larger one and the
larger engine for a single load.  At last Harry turned to his
paraphernalia and rolled up his sleeves.

"'Ere 's where we work!" he announced.  "It's us for a pulley and
bucket arrangement until we can get the 'oist to working and the skip
to running.  'Elp me 'eave a few timbers."

It was the beginning of a three-days' job, the building of a heavy
staging over the top of the shaft, the affixing of the great pulley and
then the attachment of the bucket at one end, and the skip, loaded with
pig iron, on the other.  Altogether, it formed a sort of crude,
counterbalanced elevator, by which they might lower themselves into the
shaft, with various bumpings and delays,--but which worked
successfully, nevertheless.  Together they piled into the big, iron
bucket.  Harry lugging along spikes and timbers and sledges and ropes.
Then, pulling away at the cable which held the weights, they furnished
the necessary gravity to travel downward.

An eerie journey, faced on one side by the crawling rope of the skip as
it traveled along the rusty old track on its watersoaked ties, on the
others by the still dripping timbers of the aged shaft and its broken,
rotting ladder, while the carbide lanterns cast shadows about, while
the pulley above creaked and the eroded wheels of the skip squeaked and
protested!  Downward--a hundred feet--and they collided with the
upward-bound skip, to fend off from it and start on again.  The air
grew colder, more moist.  The carbides spluttered and flared.  Then a
slight bump, and they were at the bottom.  Fairchild started to crawl
out from the bucket, only to resume his old position as Harry yelled
with fright.

"Don't do it!" gulped the Cornishman.  "Do you want me to go up like a
skyrocket?  Them weights is all at the top.  We 've got to fix a plug
down 'ere to 'old this blooming bucket or it 'll go up and we 'll stay
down!"

Working from the side of the bucket, still held down by the weight of
the two men, they fashioned a catch, or lock, out of a loop of rope
attached to heavy spikes, and fastened it taut.

"That 'll 'old," announced the big Cornishman.  "Out we go!"

Fairchild obeyed with alacrity.  He felt now that he was really coming
to something, that he was at the true beginning of his labors.  Before
him the drift tunnel, damp and dripping and dark, awaited, seeming to
throw back the flare of the carbides as though to shield the treasures
which might lie beyond.  Harry started forward a step, then pausing,
shifted his carbide and laid a hand on his companion's shoulder.

"Boy," he said slowly, "we 're starting at something now--and I don't
know where it's going to lead us.  There's a cave-in up 'ere, and if we
're ever going to get anywhere in this mine, we 'll 'ave to go past it.
And I 'm afraid of what we 're going to find when we cut our wye
through!"

Clouds of the past seemed to rise and float past Fairchild.  Clouds
which carried visions of a white, broken old man sitting by a window,
waiting for death, visions of an old safe and a letter it contained.
For a long, long moment, there was silence.  Then came Harry's voice
again.

"I 'm afraid it ain't going to be good news, Boy.  But there ain't no
wye to get around it.  It's got to come out sometime--things like that
won't stay 'idden forever.  And your father 's gone now--gone where it
can't 'urt 'im."

"I know," answered Fairchild in a queer, husky voice.  "He must have
known, Harry--he must have been willing that it come, now that he is
gone.  He wrote me as much."

"It's that or nothing.  If we sell the mine, some one else will find
it.  And we can't 'it the vein without following the drift to the
stope.  But you're the one to make the decision."

Again, a long moment; again, in memory, Fairchild was standing in a
gloomy, old-fashioned room, reading a letter he had taken from a dusty
safe.  Finally his answer came:

"He told me to go ahead, if necessary.  And we 'll go, Harry."




CHAPTER XIII

They started forward then, making their way through the slime and silt
of the drift flooring, slippery and wet from years of flooding.  From
above them the water dripped from the seep-soaked hanging-wall, which
showed rough and splotchy in the gleam of the carbides and seemed to
absorb the light until they could see only a few feet before them as
they clambered over water-soaked timbers, disjointed rails of the
little tram track which once had existed there, and floundered in and
out of the greasy pockets of mud which the floating ties of the track
had left behind.  On--on--they stopped.

Progress had become impossible.  Before them, twisted and torn and
piled about in muddy confusion, the timbers of the mine suddenly showed
in a perfect barricade, supplanted from behind by piles of muck and
rocky refuse which left no opening to the chamber of the stope beyond.
Harry's carbide went high in the air, and he slid forward, to stand a
moment in thought before the obstacle.  At place after place he
surveyed it, finally to turn with a shrug of his shoulders.

"It's going to mean more 'n a month of the 'ardest kind of work, Boy,"
came his final announcement.  "'Ow it could 'ave caved in like that is
more than I know.  I 'm sure we timbered it good."

"And look--"  Fairchild was beside him now, with his carbide--"how
everything's torn, as though from an explosion."

"It seems that wye.  But you can't tell.  Rock 'as an awful way of
churning up things when it decides to turn loose.  All I know is we 've
got a job cut out for us."

There was only one thing to do,--turn back.  Fifteen minutes more and
they were on the surface, making their plans; projects which entailed
work from morning until night for many a day to come.  There was a
track to lay, an extra skip to be lowered, that they might haul the
muck and broken timbers from the cave-in to the shaft and on out to the
dump.  There were stulls and mill-stakes and laggs to cut and to be
taken into the shaft.  And there was good, hard work of muscle and
brawn and pick and shovel, that muck might be torn away from the
cave-in, and good timbers put in place, to hold the hanging wall from
repeating its escapade of eighteen years before.  Harry reached for a
new axe and indicated another.

"We 'll cut ties first," he announced.

And thus began the weeks of effort, weeks in which they worked with
crude appliances; weeks in which they dragged the heavy stulls and
other timbers into the tunnel and then lowered them down the shaft to
the drift, two hundred feet below, only to follow them in their
counter-balanced bucket and laboriously pile them along the sides of
the drift, there to await use later on.  Weeks in which they worked in
mud and slime, as they shoveled out the muck and with their gad hooks
tore down loose portions of the hanging wall to form a roadbed for
their new tram.  Weeks in which they cut ties, in which they crawled
from their beds even before dawn, nor returned to Mother Howard's
boarding house until long after dark; weeks in which they seemed to
lose all touch with the outside world.  Their whole universe had turned
into a tunnel far beneath the surface of the earth, a drift leading to
a cave-in, which they had not yet begun to even indent with excavations.

It was a slow, galling progress, but they kept at it.  Gradually the
tram line began to take shape, pieced together from old portions of the
track which still lay in the drift and supplemented by others bought
cheaply at that graveyard of miner's hopes,--the junk yard in Ohadi.
At last it was finished; the work of moving the heavy timbers became
easier now as they were shunted on to the small tram truck from which
the body had been dismantled and trundled along the rails to the
cave-in, there to be piled in readiness for their use.  And finally--

A pick swung in the air, to give forth a chunky, smacking sound, as it
struck water-softened, spongy wood.  The attack against the cave-in had
begun, to progress with seeming rapidity for a few hours, then to
cease, until the two men could remove the debris which they had dug out
and haul it by slow, laborious effort to the surface.  But it was a
beginning, and they kept at it.

A foot at a time they tore away the old, broken, splintered timbers and
the rocky refuse which lay piled behind each shivered beam; only to
stop, carry away the muck, and then rebuild.  And it was
effort,--effort which strained every muscle of two strong men, as with
pulleys and handmade, crude cranes, they raised the big logs and
propped them in place against further encroachment of the hanging wall.
Cold and damp, in the moist air of the tunnel they labored, but there
was a joy in it all.  Down here they could forget Squint Rodaine and
his chalky-faced son; down here they could feel that they were working
toward a goal and lay aside the handicap which humans might put in
their path.

Day after day of labor and the indentation upon the cave-in grew from a
matter of feet to one of yards.  A week.  Two.  Then, as Harry swung
his pick, he lurched forward and went to his knees.  "I 've gone
through!" he announced in happy surprise.  "I 've gone through.  We 're
at the end of it!"

Up went Fairchild's carbide.  Where the pick still hung in the rocky
mass, a tiny hole showed, darker than the surrounding refuse.  He put
forth a hand and clawed at the earth about the tool; it gave way
beneath his touch

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