Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/215

Rh his brain was active, normal. I made several tests of this—for a purpose.

"I made a good investment in Juan Mendoza, though he has smoked many taels worth beyond what he paid for. He was humble. I, the purveyor of dreams, the dispenser of happiness, was his god. He feared I might repent of my bargain, cancel the contract, break the word of Hi Luen with an old Mexican peon. He offered, as he lived on, to make himself useful, to cook the stuff, to wait upon customers when he was not himself smoking. And, regarding me as his god, between his second and third pipes he told me his secret. Retold it, never varying. As far as could be, I checked it, as I checked the other things he told me under the same conditions. I did it very carefully and I accept his tale.

"In the early period of your Civil War this territory was once occupied by the Secessionists. They were helped by the Mexicans living here. A company from California drove them out."

Sheridan nodded, remembering Mary Burrows' tale.

"The Mexicans scattered into the hills. They were outlaws. And they lived as such, guerillas, preying on any one and anything they could get the better of. They turned highwaymen, joining in bands under different chiefs.

"The mine I have spoken of lay to the east, in the Sawtooth foothills. It was a placer proposition, a hill of hardened gravel. Doubtless its owner, a man named Frederick Kenyon, thought it all gold-bearing. He worked it as if he thought so. He built