laim, and I reached the
conclusion a good many days ago that somebody had been misled in
supposing it was worth money. It was nothing but Boyle's persistent
determination to get hold of it that gave it a color of value in my
mind."

"Still, it may be the means, after all, of yielding you as much as you
expected to get out of it at the first," she suggested.

He looked at her questioningly.

"I mean the Governor's declaration yesterday morning that he would pay
you twice what you expected to get out of it if you would save Jerry's
life."

"Oh, _that_!" said he, as if he attached little importance to it.

"He's a millionaire many times over," she reminded him. "He can afford
to do it, and he should."

"I may be out of the case entirely before night," he told her,
explaining that another physician would arrive on the first train from
Cheyenne.

"You know best," said she, resigning hope for his big fee with a sigh.

"Smith will come over with your tent and goods today, very likely," said
he, "and then we can leave. I had planned it all along, from the time we
used to take those moonlight walks to the river, that we should leave
this country together when it came our time to go."

"It would be wrong for you to waste your life here, even if you could
make more money than elsewhere, when the world with more people and more
pain in it needs you so badly," she encouraged him.

"Just so," he agreed. "It's very well for Smith to stay here, and men of
his kind, who have no broader world. They are doing humanity a great
service in smoothing the desert and bringing the water into it."

"We will leave it to them," she said.

They tramped across the claim until they came in sight of Hun Shanklin's
tent. Its flap was blowing in the wind.

"The old rascal came over to make friends with me," said Slavens. "He
claimed that he never lifted his hand against me. There's his horse,
trying to make it down the slope to the river. I'll have to catch the
beast and take that rope off.

"There's a man over there!" Agnes exclaimed. "Look! There among the
rocks to the right of the tent! I wonder who it is?"

Slavens looked where she pointed, just as the man disappeared among the
rocks.

"It's the Governor!" she whispered.

"Looked like his coat," he agreed.

"Do you suppose he's----"

"Trying to locate old Shanklin's mine," he said. "That's what he's
after. If there's copper on that piece the Governor will get it, even if
his