第8章

He stood up and drew a long breath to still the beatings of his heart.Then he rapidly re-climbed the rock,and passed over the ruins again,this time plunging hurriedly through,and kicking aside the charred heaps without a thought of what they had contained.Key was not an unfeeling man,he was not an unrefined one:he was a gentleman by instinct,and had an intuitive sympathy for others;but in that instant his whole mind was concentrated upon the calcined outcrop!And his first impulse was to see if it bore any evidence of previous examination,prospecting,or working by its suddenly evicted neighbors and owners.There was none:they had evidently not known it.Nor was there any reason to suppose that they would ever return to their hidden home,now devastated and laid bare to the open sunlight and open trail.They were already far away;their guilty personal secret would keep them from revisiting it.An immense feeling of relief came over the soul of this moral romancer;a momentary recognition of the Most High in this perfect poetical retribution.He ran back quickly to his saddle-bags,drew out one or two carefully written,formal notices of preemption and claim,which he and his former companions had carried in their brief partnership,erased their signatures and left only his own name,with another grateful sense of Divine interference,as he thought of them speeding far away in the distance,and returned to the ruins.With unconscious irony,he selected a charred post from the embers,stuck it in the ground a few feet from the debris of outcrop,and finally affixed his "Notice."Then,with a conscientiousness born possibly of his new religious convictions,he dislodged with his pickaxe enough of the brittle outcrop to constitute that presumption of "actual work"upon the claim which was legally required for its maintenance,and returned to his horse.In replacing his things in his saddle-bags he came upon the slipper,and for an instant so complete was his preoccupation in his later discovery,that he was about to throw it away as useless impedimenta,until it occurred to him,albeit vaguely,that it might be of service to him in its connection with that discovery,in the way of refuting possible false claimants.

He was not aware of any faithlessness to his momentary romance,any more than he was conscious of any disloyalty to his old companions,in his gratification that his good fortune had come to him alone.

This singular selection was a common experience of prospecting.

And there was something about the magnitude of his discovery that seemed to point to an individual achievement.He had made a rough calculation of the richness of the lode from the quantity of precipitate in his rude experiment;he had estimated its length,breadth,and thickness from his slight knowledge of geology and the theories then ripe;and the yield would be colossal!Of course,he would require capital to work it,he would have to "let in"others to his scheme and his prosperity;but the control of it would always be HIS OWN.

Then he suddenly started as he had never in his life before started at the foot of man!For there was a footfall in the charred brush;and not twenty yards from him stood Collinson,who had just dismounted from a mule.The blood rushed to Key's pale face.

"Prospectin'agin?"said the proprietor of the mill,with his weary smile.

"No,"said Key quickly,"only straightening my pack."The blood deepened in his cheek at his instinctive lie.Had he carefully thought it out before,he would have welcomed Collinson,and told him all.But now a quick,uneasy suspicion flashed upon him.

Perhaps his late host had lied,and knew of the existence of the hidden house.Perhaps--he had spoken of some "silvery rock"the night before--he even knew something of the lode itself.He turned upon him with an aggressive face.But Collinson's next words dissipated the thought.

"I'm glad I found ye,anyhow,"he said."Ye see,arter you left,Isaw ye turn off the trail and make for the burning woods instead o'

goin'round.I sez to myself,'That fellow is making straight for Skinner's.He's sorter worried about me and that empty pork bar'l,'--I hadn't oughter spoke that away afore you boys,anyhow,--'and he's takin'risks to help me.'So I reckoned I'd throw my leg over Jenny here,and look arter ye--and go over to Skinner's myself--and vote.""Certainly,"said Key with cheerful alacrity,and the one thought of getting Collinson away;"we'll go together,and we'll see that that pork barrel is filled!"He glowed quite honestly with this sudden idea of remembering Collinson through his good fortune.

"Let's get on quickly,for we may find the fire between us on the outer trail."He hastily mounted his horse.

"Then you didn't take this as a short cut,"said Collinson,with dull perseverance in his idea."Why not?It looks all clear ahead.""Yes,"said Key hurriedly,"but it's been only a leap of the fire,it's still raging round the bend.We must go back to the cross-trail."His face was still flushing with his very equivocating,and his anxiety to get his companion away.Only a few steps further might bring Collinson before the ruins and the "Notice,"and that discovery must not be made by him until Key's plans were perfected.A sudden aversion to the man he had a moment before wished to reward began to take possession of him."Come on,"he added almost roughly.

But to his surprise,Collinson yielded with his usual grim patience,and even a slight look of sympathy with his friend's annoyance."I reckon you're right,and mebbee you're in a hurry to get to Skinner's all along o'MY business,I oughtn't hev told you boys what I did."As they rode rapidly away he took occasion to add,when Key had reined in slightly,with a feeling of relief at being out of the hollow,"I was thinkin',too,of what you'd asked about any one livin'here unbeknownst to me.""Well,"said Key,with a new nervousness.