prints this fine
morning, marking his way from the tent down the hill into the trees. He
was not an inhabitant of the camp. This was his first visit, cautiously
made, and nobody had seen him come or go except Drylyn.

The woman was proprietor of the dance-hall at Salvation Gap, and on
account of her beauty and habits had been named the American Beer
Gazelle by a travelling naturalist who had education, and was interested
in the wild animals of all countries. Drylyn's relations with the
Gazelle were colored with sentiment. The sentiment on his part was
genuine; so genuine that the shrewd noticing camp joked Drylyn, telling
him he had grown to look young again under the elixir of romance. One of
the prospectors had remarked fancifully that Drylyn's "rusted mustache
had livened up; same ez flow'rs ye've kerried a long ways when yer girl
puts 'em in a pitcher o' water." Being the sentiment of a placer miner,
the lover's feeling took no offence or wound at any conduct of the
Gazelle's that was purely official; it was for him that she personally
cared. He never thought of suspecting anything when, after one of her
trips to Folsom, she began to send away some of the profits--gold,
coined sometimes, sometimes raw dust--that her hall of entertainment
earned for her. She mentioned to him that her mother in San Anton'
needed it, and simple-minded Drylyn believed. It did not occur to him to
ask, or even wonder, how it came that this mother had never needed money
until so lately, or why the trips to Folsom became so constant. Counting
her middle-aged adorer a fool, the humorous Gazelle had actually once,
on being prevented from taking the journey herself, asked him to carry
the package to Folsom for her, and deliver it there to a certain
shot-gun messenger of the express company, who would see that it went to
the right place. A woman's name and an address at San Antonio were
certainly scrawled on the parcel. The faithful Drylyn waited till the
stage came in, and handed over his treasure to the messenger, who gave
him one amazed look that he did not notice. He ought to have seen that
young man awhile afterwards, the package torn open, a bag of dust on his
knee, laughing almost to tears over a letter he had found with the gold
inside the wrapping. But Drylyn was on the road up to Salvation Gap at
that time. The shot-gun messenger was twenty-three; Drylyn was
forty-five. Gazelles are apt to do this sort of thing. After all,
though, it