Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/97

 shift with me if we are married very soon. You'll be given to the first fool that comes along, if he happens to own a gold mine."

Her brown eyes were on the point of her parasol as she dug it into the gravel at her feet.

"Jim, why can't you buy War Eagle shares? Papa says they'll go ever and ever so much higher, and you've three thousand saved up. Yoar uncle is a stock- holder and can't he get you 'inside the ring,' as papa says?"

''The president wouldn't waste a postage stamp on an offer for less than two thousand shares, and they're ten dollars per share ; besides, Mollie, it would be just iike buying a chance on you, and if the shares didn't boom, I wouldn't get you. Your father is steeped in mining booms, and he half regards you as a good pros- pect it would be well to hold for a higher bid."

A fe^v loose pebbles, disturbed over the tunnel's mouth, fell into their laps; they started at the idea of an eavesdropper and, listening, heard footsteps running rapidly down the hill. Prescott sprang on a bowlder and watched an opening be- low.

"I know who it is," said Mollie from the top of another bowlder. "It's Jack Wilson, the man who discovered this mine."

"Wonder what he's slinking around here for; he's liable to get his neck twisted."

"Papa says he gets on a regular spree every time he comes over. He was prospecting here for the men who own the mine now, and was to have a third in- terest or something, but he claims they locked him out when they found he had struck it rich. He lives the other side of the mountain in the junipers, and makes periodical trips over to get drunk and swear vengeance on the mine and the men who swindled him."

The hard-hearted mill whistle screamed below them, and they picked their way down, hand in hand, separating when the window of the superintendent's ofl&ce crept around in view.

The old tunnel, where they had met, was the first effort of the War Eagle Mining Company on a vein that "pinched out;" the mother lode had to be tapped farther down. Two hundred feet in length and timbered thoroughly, its end served as a store house for the tons and tons of giant powder, caps and fuse. While the tunnel was in progression a problem in the form of bad air ham])ered them, and a shaft or air vent had been sunk from above entering the tunnel nearly at its end. As bad air escapes with a draft, the vent served as a sort of chimney, sucking off the bad and drawing in the pure. Just beyond where the vent entered the tunnel was a door to which the shift bosses and superintendent only had keys. The afternoon was hot. Even the mountain air seemed sleepy as Prescott perspired over the monthly report, casting an occasional longing look up at the comfortable looking white head of old War Eagle. The superintendent was showing the mine to some lace-booted, corduroyed gentlemen from Spokane, and Prescott worked lazily.

Below the mill, "tough towTi" fumed and cursed. Roney's cool beer was the only relief, and even the blacksmith came over to put his feet on a card table and cool off.

Jack Wilson was swaggering at the bar and drinking his grievance into larger proportions. "I tell you, boys, the whole d — camp ought to be wiped out. All I ever got could be put in your eye." The bartender grinningly nodded, as he wiped the bar with a mechanical right-arm swing.

Midnight and Prescott was still awake. At intervals he punched the pillow unmercifully, but the feathers only tantalized him by creeping into the corners. Why was gold placed above life itself? Mammon must stick its ogre head into his visions. Surely a hundred a month would keep a wife.

He got up and sat at the window with his chin gripped hard in his hands. In the moonlight he saw a wobbling figure slowly climbing the trail to the powder tunnel. It was Jack Wilson taking the short cut to his cabin in the j