she had danced--like
a child that hears good news or runs to meet its father--and he had
thought her worthy of his love! He had battered his brain for weeks to
devise some plan whereby he could make his peace; he had taken her blows
like a dog; and she had answered with this. Whether it was Stiff Neck
George or some other man, she had known both his presence and his
purpose; and now she rejoiced in the catastrophe. A hundred dollars
would buy him a squaw more worthy of confidence and love.

There was darkness in the mill, but when they brought the flares,
Wiley saw that the ruin was complete. From the rock breaker to the
concentrators there was nothing but splintered wood, twisted iron and
upturned tanks; and the demon of destruction which had raged down
through its length was nothing but the fly-wheel of the rock crusher.
What power had uprooted it he was at a loss to conjecture but, a full
ton in weight, it had jumped from its frame and plowed its way down
through the mill. The ore-bins were intact, for the fly-wheel had
overleapt them, but tables and tanks and concentrating jigs were
utterly smashed and ruined. Even the wall of the mill had given way
before it and the cold light of dawn crept in through a jagged
aperture that marked its resistless course. The fly-wheel was gone and
the damage was done; but there was still, of course, the post mortem.
What had caused that massive shafting, with its ponderous speeding
wheels, to leap from its bearings and go crashing down the descent,
laying everything before it in ruins? Wiley summoned his engineer and,
in the shattered jaws of the rock-breaker, they found the
innocent-looking instrument of destruction. It was not a stick of
dynamite, but a heavy steel sledge-hammer that had been cast into the
jaws of the crusher. They had closed down upon it, the hammer had
resisted, and then all the momentum of that whirling double fly-wheel
had been brought to bear against it. Yet the hammer could not be
crushed and, as the wheel had applied its weight, the resistance to
its force had caused it to leap from its bearings and go hurtling down
the incline.

It was a very complete job, even better than dynamiting, and yet Wiley
did not blame it on Stiff Neck George. Some miner, some millman, who had
seen it done before, had repeated the performance for his benefit. Or
was it, perhaps, for Virginia's? He remembered the engineer who had fed
his greasy overalls into the gearings of the