Page:Peak and Prairie (1894).pdf/295

 "Listen at him!" cried Marietta.

The words might have offended the taste of the governor who had failed to secure this valuable matrimonial alliance, but the poise of the pretty head, as she cast an affectionate look upon Jim, lying on the old sofa, would have graced the proudest duchess of them all.

Now the "Horn of Plenty" was a Lame Gulch stock, and, since the mining-camp of Lame Gulch had been in existence less than a year, the value of any mine up there was a very doubtful quantity. It was perhaps the proximity of the camp to Springtown, that fired the imagination of the Springtown public, perhaps the daily coming and going of people between the two points. Be that as it may, the head must have been a very level one indeed that could keep its balance through the excitement of that winter's "boom." There were many residents of Springtown who had a sentiment for the Peak, more intelligent and more imaginative than any Marietta could boast, yet it is probable that the best nature-lover of them all shared something of her feeling, now that she had come to regard the Peak as the mountain on the other side of which the Lame Gulch treasures lay awaiting their resurrection.