night? When are we going to see you again,
old man?"

"I don't know." He wheeled about swiftly, then held out his hand.
"Don't forget to repeat what I have told you to your father and make it
as strong as you can. I'm playing a game of my own, and when we meet
again it will be cards on the table. Good-bye, Win."

"Good luck!" The other hesitated wistfully. "If--if you should happen
by any chance to run across Willa in your wanderings, will you tell her
for me that I'm still waiting, as I said I should be; that I am still,
as always, at her service?"

CHAPTER XXII

WHERE TRAILS MEET

A long, narrow valley between snow-capped mountains glistening under
the January sun; a cluster of ramshackle, weather-beaten wooden houses
elbowing each other on either side of a single straggling street, with
here and there a newer concrete building planted firmly like
respectable citizens in a disreputable mob. Stray dogs sniffing at
heaps of refuse, a group of tethered horses shivering under thin
blankets in the hotel shed, a battered jitney or two stalled before
shop and saloon. A Chinaman with a huge bundle upon his head, a
slatternly woman brushing the dry, powdered snow from the path, a
tawdry one pattering along, her rouged face pitiful in the clear
merciless light; red-shirted miners crawling like ants to the yawning
shaft-mouths half way up the mountainside.--This was Topaz Gulch on a
certain wintry morning.

In the office of the Palace Hotel, the proprietor tossed aside his
week-old Chicago newspaper and rose with alacrity as a slender, girlish
figure, clad in a great fur coat, came lightly down the stairs.

"Everything all right, Ma'am? Did the missus make you comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you." The girl nodded, smiling. Then her face sobered.
"I wonder if you could tell me--may I ask how long you have been here
in Topaz Gulch?"

"Five years, Ma'am," he returned promptly. "For a boom town that
didn't grow as was expected, nor yet peter out entirely, Topaz is
holding her own and business ain't so bad; besides, the air is good for
the missus. That's why we come in the first place."

The girl had paused at the window, gazing up the western slope.

"That is the Yellow Streak?"

"Yes'm, that's the mine. Folks thought at first that she was going to
pan out another bonanza, I guess, but now she's just about profitable
enough to make it worth while to keep her going. Great town, this must
have been when