love that has grown out of their long intimacy together since they
were children."

"Bah! Calf love! Let the fellow go and she will forget him. Hearts are
not broken in these days by disappointments in love affairs."

The colonel writhed in his chair.

"But Lou--you do not know her heart!" he suggested. "If you looked
closely at her you would have seen that she is pale. She does not
suspect the truth, but I think she is wasting away because Jack hasn't
written for weeks."

He saw Donnegan wince under the whip.

"It is true," murmured the wanderer. "She is not like others, heaven
knows!" He turned. "And what if I fail to bring over Jack Landis with
the sight of Lou?"

The colonel relaxed; the great crisis was past and Donnegan would
undertake the journey.

"In that case, my dear lad, there is an expedient so simple that you
astonish me by not perceiving it. If there is no way to wean Landis away
from the woman, then get him alone and shoot him through the heart. In
that way you remove from the life of Lou a man unworthy of her and you
also make the mines come to the heir of Jack Landis--namely, myself. And
in the latter case, Mr. Donnegan, be sure--oh, be sure that I should not
forget who brought the mines into my hands!"

10

Fifty miles over any sort of going is a stiff march. Fifty miles uphill
and down and mostly over districts where there was only a rough cow path
in lieu of a road made a prodigious day's work; and certainly it was an
almost incredible feat for one who professed to hate work with a
consuming passion and who had looked upon an eight-mile jaunt the night
before as an insuperable burden. Yet such was the distance which
Donnegan had covered, and now he drove the pack mule out on the shoulder
of the hill in full view of The Corner with the triangle of the Young
Muddy and Christobel Rivers embracing the little town. Even the gaunt,
leggy mule was tired to the dropping point, and the tough buckskin which
trailed up behind went with downward head. When Louise Macon turned to
him, he had reached the point where he swung his head around first and
then grudgingly followed the movement with his body. The girl was tired,
also, in spite of the fact that she had covered every inch of the
distance in the saddle. There was that violet shade of weariness under
her eyes and her shoulders slumped forward. Only Donnegan, the hater of
labor, was fresh.

They had started in the first dusk of the comin