eyes.

At last she straightened her tall figure resolutely. "I must not give
way to tears. I can not! I will not! There must be some way to pay
my father's debts beside this extremity, to which death is almost
preferable. There is still a week's time. A week--only a week." Panic
overwhelmed her, and when someone gently took her hand, she cried aloud
in terror.

"Why, Sweetheart, do I frighten you so? I waited long upon the mesa near
the speed-track at the spot we had agreed upon, and when you did not
come I fared forth to meet you."

"Eric, it is Saul again. What can I do?"

"Dear, I have about $2000 which I am resolved to play on the races. I
will win. I must. Old Irish Mike has brought over his whole stableful
of saddle horses and I was raised in Kentucky. Do not despair, we shall
beat the gambler at his own game. Here is Mike, now. Perhaps--Mike, it's
a fine string of horses you've picked up.

"It is so. Many a thoroughbred I've bought that came all the way from
Kentucky or Missouri. All that had the stamina to get to Californy, the
one thing left that many of the poor devils could sell when they reached
the coast."

"Mike, some of them are faster than others, I suppose."

"'Tis what half the shoe-string gamblers in the camp have tried to find
out. I may have me own opinion, but it's to meself I'll kape it till
afther the races are run. I will not spile sport. Have ye seen the last
cayuse that's bein' put in?

"You mean the cow pony that came in with the bunch of cattle from the
Napa Valley yesterday?"

"The same. The auld boy, whilst in his cups, is bettin' she can beat
anythin' on four legs, even jack rabbits an' antelope. The precious
gamblin' riff-raff are fillin' him up with tanglefoot, proper."

"Why, Mike?" Mike glanced at the silent girl and then down into the
gulch below.

"Miss Patty, have ye visited the claims?"

"No, but I should like to."

"Come, then, if ye will so pleasure an old man. The men will not be
workin' tomorrow. They will be that pleased to show a lady how to wash
a pan o' dirt, they will be saltin' ivery pan wit' nuggets for ye! Eric,
lad," he called back to the tall young man, "ye might look the cow horse
over. She has not been curried for long; yet, whisper, beauty is but
skin deep an' the finest rapier is often encased in a rusty scabbard."

"There is something going forward that Mike wishes me to see," though
Eric, as he hurried off to the livery stable. "That is why he