Looking back upon it from the vantage point gained by a few hours' toil
on a bare Colorado mountain-side, that ninth of March seemed to have
withdrawn into a fathomless past. I was no longer a hunted vagabond; I
was breathing the free clean air of a new environment, and in the narrow
pit beside me a fortune was waiting to be dug out; a fortune for the
ex-convict no less than for the two who had never by hint or innuendo
sought to inquire into their partner's past. It was too good to be true;
and yet it was true, contingent, as I saw it, only upon our fortitude,
discretion and manful courage.

Nevertheless, there was still one small disturbing note in the music of
the spheres. Barrett's mention of Phineas Everton as one of our nearest
neighbors disquieted me vaguely. It was quite in vain that I reasoned
that in all human probability Everton would fail to identify the bearded
man of twenty-eight with the schoolboy he had known ten or twelve years
earlier. He had taught only one year in the Glendale High School, and I
was not in any of his classes. Polly had known me much better. She had
been in one of the grammar grades, and was just at an age to make a
big-brother confidant of her teacher's brother--my sister being at that
time a teacher in the grammar school.

Upon this I fell to wondering curiously how Polly, a plain-faced,
eager-eyed little girl in short dresses, could have grown into anything
meriting Barrett's enthusiastic description of her as a "peach." Also, I
wondered how her bookish, studious father had ever contrived to break
with the scholastic traditions sufficiently to become an assayer for a
Western mine. But I might have saved myself this latter speculation.
Cripple Creek, like other great mining-camps, served as a melting-pot for
many strange and diverse elements.

At the earliest graying of dawn I roused my partners and took my turn
with the blankets, too tired and drowsy to stay awake while Gifford
cooked breakfast. I was sound asleep long before they fired the two
holes Gifford and I had drilled the previous afternoon, and they let me
alone until the noonday meal was ready on the rough plank table. Over
the coffee and canned things Barrett brought our bonanza story up to date.

"It's no joke, Jimmie," he said soberly. "We've got the world by the
ears, if we can only manage to hold on and go on digging. The lead has
widened to over six inches, and we have two more sacks of the stuff
pic