an that we ought to be able to hire?" I asked.

"He is the best, or at least one of the best, metallurgical chemists in
the district, and it goes without saying that an honest assayer counts
for everything in this mining game. Without one, the smelters will
skin you alive."

I laughed. "I didn't ask what he was; I asked who he was--or is."

"He is a school-teacher, or college professor, and I'm told he has
taught in High Schools and freshwater colleges all over the Middle
West," said Barrett, as we topped the hill to our side of the mountain
shoulder. And then I got my bucketing of cold water. "His name is
Phineas Everton, and his daughter's name is Mary--though everybody
calls her Polly."

XIII

For the Sinews of War

Gifford, sitting in the darkness with his back to the windlass and the
big old-fashioned holster revolver across his knees, held us up promptly
and peremptorily when we came over the spur. Seeing Barrett with me, he
knew pretty well what the results of the assay were before we told him.
At the edge of the shallow pit we held a council of war--the first of
many. Gifford fully agreed with Barrett that the most profound secrecy
was the first requisite. Though he was new to the business of
gold-mining--as new as either the bank teller or myself--he could
prefigure pretty accurately what was before us.

"Here's where we'll have to ride and tie on the snoozing act," was his
drawling comment. "We mustn't leave her alone for a single minute, after
this; and it's got to be one of us, at that. We couldn't afford to hire
a watchman if we had a million dollars."

Under the ride-and-tie proposal I volunteered to stand watch for the
remainder of the night; and after the other two had turned in I took
Gifford's place, with the windlass for a back rest and Barrett's shot-gun
for a weapon.

I was not sorry to have a little time to think; to try in some fashion to
readjust the point of view so suddenly snatched from its anchorings in
the commonplace and shot high into the empyrean. It was the night of the
ninth of June. Three months earlier, to a day, I had been an outcast; a
miserable tramp roaming the streets of a great city; broken in mind, body
and heart; bitter, discouraged, and so nearly ready to fall in with
Kellow's criminal suggestion as actually to let him give me the money
which, if I had kept it or spent it as he directed, would have committed
me irretrievably to a life of crime.