Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/33

Rh crick nor the lode ain't on their reservation but it's so close they figger it's their property. They'd bin watchin' us. Smoke-talk all along the route. Then they warned us. Then they nigh got us. Later they did get Dave an' Lem, I reckon."

His voice tailed off. His great, gaunt frame quivered and relaxed. The candle threw weird shadows on his face and body. The heavy eyelids, closed wearily, showed in great pits of darkness. The big chest laboured, was convulsed, and then quiet.

"He's gone!" said Healy, his voice sharp with greed and anger. "Gone—and he never told us where it was. Wasted his time talking about his fool wife and kid."

"Forget that," said Stone, crisply, himself trembling with excitement. "He was trying to tell us in his own way. Keep the women out of it, Healy. Give me that whisky. Lefty."

The Cockney did so, his eyes still glittering as he watched Stone's efforts to get some liquor between the old prospector's teeth, worn and stained, but stubbornly resisting. It was ghastly work. It seemed like trying to wrest a secret from the grave, disturbing the rest that an old man longed for. Stone felt the brutality of it, but the lust of gold had entered into him as it had entered into the others. The glittering quartz, the little piles in the envelopes, had done their age-old-task, the Genius of Gold possessed their spirits.

Sweat was trickling down the face of Healy and his hands shook like leaves in the wind. Sweat