d if you'll help me--run this place myself.
Thayer's out--from the minute I can get a new outfit. I'm not going to
take any chances. When he goes, the whole bunch here goes with him!"

"Ah, _oui_!" Ba'tiste grinned with enthusiasm. "You said a
what-you-say--large bite! Now," he walked toward the saw, "we shall
fell a tree that shall not split."

"If you don't mind, I'd rather go back and look around the place. I
want to get lined up on everything before I start to Denver."

"Ah, _oui_." Together, led by the wolf-dog, they made their way to the
wagon again, once more to skirt the lake and to start down the narrow
roadway leading beside the flume. A half-hour more and there came the
sound of hammers and of saws. They stopped, and staring through the
scraggly trees, made out the figures of half a dozen men busily at work
upon the erection of a low, rambling building. All about them were
vast piles of lumber, two-by-fours, scantlings, boardings,
shingles,--everything that possibly could be needed in the building of
not one, but many structures. Ba'tiste nodded.

"The new mill."

"Yes. Probably being built out of my lumber. It's a cinch they didn't
transport it all the way from Tabernacle."

"Nor pay M'sieu Houston. Many things can happen when one is the
manager."

Barry made no answer. For another mile they drove in silence, at last
to come into the clearing of Barry's mill, with its bunk house, its
cook house, its diminutive commissary, its mill and kilns and sheds.
Houston leaped from the wagon to start a census and to begin his
preparations for a cleaning-out of the whole establishment. But at the
door of the commissary he whirled, staring. A buggy was just coming
over the brow of the little hill which led to the mill property. Some
one had called to him,---a woman whose voice had caused him to start,
then, a second later, to go running forward.

She was beside Thayer in the buggy, leaning forth, one hand extended as
Barry hurried toward her, her black eyes flashing eagerness, her full,
yet cold lips parted, her olive-skinned cheeks enlivened by a flush of
excitement as Houston came to her, forgetful of the sneer of the man at
her side, forgetful of the staring Ba'tiste in the background,
forgetful of his masquerade, of everything.

"Agnes!" he gasped. "Why did you--"

"I thought--" and the drawling voice of Fred Thayer had a suddenly
sobering effect on Houston, "that you weren't hurt very