Page:Sunset Magazine vol. 31.pdf/95

82 mind if he left you to me, do you, Cinnamon?"

"I'm obliged to him" replied Dick.

"I'm not much to be left to" she sighed. "Do you think it would be all right if I just took his place?"

"And you and me be pards?" said Dick. It seemed very remarkable that Sally, who had bossed Clay and himself ever since they had been digging and prospecting about Lodestar, should take him into partnership.

"Don't you want me for a partner?" she queried, eyes downcast and lips trembling in spite of her resolution.

"I'd just as leave be left to you" explained Dick, “but if you mean pards—" without much confidence he moved his huge freckled paws across the table palms up, and in them Sally laid her own slender hands, closing her fingers with a strong grip.

"I'll help work the claim till we strike it rich" she said.

Cinnamon Dick's heart sank in his breast; they would never strike it rich in these diggings. For a month before Clay went under with pneumonia the partners had worked in a perfunctory way, knowing they were far from the lode, where every claim had been staked long ago.

"It'll be hell for the boss to find this out" Clay had said.

"You ought to tell her" was Dick's comment. "We had better make Cinnabar camp before we go dead broke."

"You tell her, Dick."

"And disappoint her after she's backed us to win for three years? Not me!" So Sally had not been told at all.

Now Dick looked at her across the table. "Maybe we'd better quit this claim and cross the range. There's a new camp—"

"Cinnamon, it must be here, 'cause he said it was" replied Sally earnestly. "And we'll strike it rich, and build him a mony-mint.”

"We sure will" agreed Dick.

"Now we'll keep good watch" she said. "Me first, and then you."

Dick, reflecting on the bitter disappointment in store for Sally, was afraid she would read the guilty secret in his face, and so laid it upon his arms. Almost instantly he fell asleep. Presently the girl stole across the room and out into that mountain night which holds the musical stillness of the stars. Deep in the purple dusk one sparkling planet set among the peaks. So dark and vast a prospect made her feel infinitely lonesome, and Sally cried with face uncovered, her grief naked to the sky.

But when her partner awoke near dawn, she was stitching away as he had seen her last.

Clay Marlow's light was blown out, and it was proper for his partner to grieve above the ashes. It was also proper that Clay's partner should pay his debts. Mr. Jonah Crabbis said so positively, in his office down at Lodestar, and Mrs. Crabbis agreed just as positively. Two lean hard visages wagged over the ledger, which showed a balance of eighteen dollars for provisions, tools, etc.

"Some day you air goin' to ruin us, creditin' right an left" predicted Mrs. Crabbis, her swarthy cheeks flushed with resentment. Her husband was of mottled complexion, with sharp-knuckled, chalky hands; otherwise there was nothing to afford a contrast one against the other. The thin-lipped mouths were set in the same ghastly, conciliating smirk; the two narrow foreheads wrinkled archly.

"I might foreclose—" began Mr. Crabbis.

"You know them two swindlers ain't taken enough out of that claim lately to pay for salt" retorted his wife. She had further cause for indignation; Cinnamon Dick had made his partner's coffin with his own hands, when everybody knew that the Crabbises outfitted for burying. In fact, Crabbises included every line of business activity in Lodestar; they owned several profitable claims, sold a pernicious liquor by the gallon, shaved notes. It was a cant saying among the miners that themselves raised the dust, but it all settled in old Crab's till. Mrs. Crabbis was known as Mother Lode; however, they did not jest disrespectfully, for she was the only member of the revered sex in this remote camp, with one exception; the exception, of course, being Sally Marlow.

On the morning after the lonely watch in the cabin, Sally came down the gulch and entered the single street of Lodestar. The slender pretty little girl was the wonder and delight of camp, and many had been the offers of assistance during Clay's brief illness, but the girl and Dick had chosen to attend him and to watch by him alone.

On the way into town she met several of the miners who shook hands with