solution, with exactly the same result! Again and again he repeated
it, until the bottom of the glass was quite gray with the fallen
precipitate. And his own face grew as gray.
His hand trembled no longer as he carefully poured off the solution so
as not to disturb the precipitate at the bottom. Then he drew out his
knife, scooped a little of the gray sediment upon its point, and
emptying his tin cup, turned it upside down upon his knee, placed the
sediment upon it, and began to spread it over the dull surface of its
bottom with his knife. He had intended to rub it briskly with his
knife blade. But in the very action of spreading it, the first stroke
of his knife left upon the sediment and the cup the luminous streak of
burnished silver!
He stood up and drew a long breath to still the beatings of his heart.
Then he rapidly re-climbed the rock, and passed over the ruins again,
this time plunging hurriedly through, and kicking aside the charred
heaps without a thought of what they had contained. Key was not an
unfeeling man, he was not an unrefined one: he was a gentleman by
instinct, and had an intuitive sympathy for others; but in that instant
his whole mind was concentrated upon the calcined outcrop! And his
first impulse was to see if it bore any evidence of previous
examination, prospecting, or working by its suddenly evicted neighbors
and owners. There was none: they had evidently not known it. Nor was
there any reason to suppose that they would ever return to their hidden
home, now devastated and laid bare to the open sunlight and open trail.
They were already far away; their guilty personal secret would keep
them from revisiting it. An immense feeling of relief came over the
soul of this moral romancer; a momentary recognition of the Most High
in this perfect poetical retribution. He ran back quickly to his
saddle-bags, drew out one or two carefully written, formal notices of
preemption and claim, which he and his former companions had carried in
their brief partnership, erased their signatures and left only his own
name, with another grateful sense of Divine interference, as he thought
of them speeding far away in the distance, and returned to the ruins.
With unconscious irony, he selected a charred post from the embers,
stuck it in the ground a few feet from the debris of outcrop, and
finally affixed his "Notice." Then, with a conscientiousness born
possibly of his new religious convictions, he dislodged with his
pickaxe enough of the brittle outcrop to constitute that presumption of
"actual work" upon the claim which was legally required for its
maintenance, and returned to his horse. In replacing his things in his
saddle-bags he came upon the slipper, and for an instant so complete
was his preoccupation in his later discovery, that he was about to
throw it away as useless impedimenta, until it occurred to him, albeit
vaguely, that it might be of service to him in its connection with that
discovery, in the way of refuting possible false claimants. He was not
aware of any faithlessness to his momentary romance, any more than he
was conscious of any disloyalty to his old companions, in his
gratification that his good fortune had come to him alone. This
singular selection was a common experience of prospecting. And there
was something about the magnitude of his discovery that seemed to point
to an individual achievement. He had made a rough calculation of the
richness of the lode from the quantity of precipitate in his rude
experiment; he had estimated its length, breadth, and thickness from
his slight knowledge of geology and the theories then ripe; and the
yield would be colossal! Of course, he would require capital to work
it, he would have to "let in" others to his scheme and his prosperity;
but the control of it would always be HIS OWN.
Then he suddenly started as he had never in his life before started at
the foot of man! For there was a footfall in the charred brush; and
not twenty yards from him stood Collinson, who had just dismounted from
a mule. The blood rushed to Key's pale face.
"Prospectin' agin?" said the proprietor of the mill, with his weary
smile.
"No," said Key quickly, "only straightening my pack." The blood
deepened in his cheek at his instinctive lie. Had he carefully thought
it out before, he would have welcomed Collinson, and told him all. But
now a quick, uneasy suspicion flashed upon him. Perhaps his late host
had lied, and knew of the existence of the hidden house. Perhaps--he
had spoken of some "silvery rock" the night before--he even knew
something of the lode itself. He turned upon him with an aggressive
face. But Collinson's next words dissipated the thought.
"I'm glad I found ye, anyhow," he said. "Ye see, arter you left, I saw
ye turn off the trail and make for the burning woods instead o' goin'
round. I sez to myself, 'That fellow is making straight for Skinner's.
He's sorter worried about me and that empty pork bar'l,'--I hadn't
oughter spoke that away afore you boys, anyhow,--'and he's takin' risks
to help me.' So I reckoned I'd throw my leg over Jenny here, and look
arter ye--and go over to Skinner's myself--and vote."
"Certainly," said Key with cheerful alacrity, and the one thought of
getting Collinson away; "we'll go together, and we'll see that that
pork barrel is filled!" He glowed quite honestly with this sudden idea
of remembering Collinson through his good fortune. "Let's get on
quickly, for we may find the fire between us on the outer trail." He
hastily mounted his horse.
"Then you didn't take this as a short cut," said Collinson, with dull
perseverance in his idea. "Why not? It looks all clear ahead."
"Yes," said Key hurriedly, "but it's been only a leap of the fire, it's
still raging round the bend. We must go back to the cross-trail." His
face was still flushing with his very equivocating, and his anxiety to
get his companion away. Only a few steps further might bring Collinson
before the ruins and the "Notice," and that discovery must not be made
by him until Key's plans were perfected. A sudden aversion to the man
he had a moment before wished to reward began to take possession of
him. "Come on," he added almost roughly.
But to his surprise, Collinson yielded with his usual grim patience,
and even a slight look of sympathy with his friend's annoyance. "I
reckon you're right, and mebbee you're in a hurry to get to Skinner's
all along o' MY business, I oughtn't hev told you boys what I did." As
they rode rapidly away he took occasion to add, when Key had reined in
slightly, with a feeling of relief at being out of the hollow, "I was
thinkin', too, of what you'd asked about any one livin' here
unbeknownst to me."
"Well," said Key, with a new nervousness.
"Well; I only had an idea o' proposin' that you and me just took a look
around that holler whar you thought you saw suthin'!" said Collinson
tentatively.
"Nonsense," said Key hurriedly. "We really saw nothing--it was all a
fancy; and Uncle Dick was joking me because I said I thought I saw a
woman's face," he added with a forced laugh.
Collinson glanced at him, half sadly. "Oh! You were only funnin',
then. I oughter guessed that. I oughter have knowed it from Uncle
Dick's talk!" They rode for some moments in silence; Key preoccupied
and feverish, and eager only to reach Skinner's. Skinner was not only
postmaster but "registrar" of the district, and the new discoverer did
not feel entirely safe until he had put his formal notification and
claims "on record." This was no publication of his actual secret, nor
any indication of success, but was only a record that would in all
probability remain unnoticed and unchallenged amidst the many other
hopeful dreams of sanguine prospectors. But he was suddenly startled
from his preoccupation.
"Ye said ye war straightenin' up yer pack just now," said Collinson
slowly.
"Yes!" said Key almost angrily, "and I was."
"Ye didn't stop to straighten it up down at the forks of the trail, did
ye?"
"I may have," said Key nervously. "But why?"
"Ye won't mind my axin' ye another question, will ye? Ye ain't
carryin' round with ye no woman's shoe?"
Key felt the blood drop from his cheeks. "What do you mean?" he
stammered, scarcely daring to lift his conscious eyelids to his
companion's glance. But when he did so he was amazed to find that
Collinson's face was almost as much disturbed as his own.
"I know it ain't the square thing to ask ye, but this is how it is,"
said Collinson hesitatingly. "Ye see just down by the fork of the
trail where you came I picked up a woman's shoe. It sorter got me!
For I sez to myself, 'Thar ain't no one bin by my shanty, comin' or
goin', for weeks but you boys, and that shoe, from the looks of it,
ain't bin there as many hours.' I knew there wasn't any wimin
hereabouts. I reckoned it couldn't hev bin dropped by Uncle Dick or
that other man, for you would have seen it on the road. So I allowed
it might have bin YOU. And yer it is." He slowly drew from his
pocket--what Key was fully prepared to see--the mate of the slipper Key
had in his saddle-bags! The fair fugitive had evidently lost them both.
But Key was better prepared now (perhaps this kind of dissimulation is
progressive), and quickly alive to the necessity of throwing Collinson
off this unexpected scent. And his companion's own suggestion was
right to his hand, and, as it seemed, again quite providential! He
laughed, with a quick color, which, however, appeared to help his lie,
as he replied half hysterically, "You're right, old man, I own up, it's
mine! It's d--d silly, I know--but then, we're all fools where women
are concerned--and I wouldn't have lost that slipper for a mint of
money."
He held out his hand gayly, but Collinson retained the slipper while he
gravely examined it.
"You wouldn't mind telling me where you mought hev got that?" he said
meditatively.
"Of course I should mind," said Key with a well-affected mingling of
mirth and indignation. "What are you thinking of, you old rascal?
What do you take me for?"
But Collinson did not laugh. "You wouldn't mind givin' me the size and
shape and general heft of her as wore that shoe?"
"Most decidedly I should do nothing of the kind!" said Key half
impatiently. "Enough, that it was given to me by a very pretty girl.
There! that's all you will know."
"GIVEN to you?" said Collinson, lifting his eyes.
"Yes," returned Key sharply.
Collinson handed him the slipper gravely. "I only asked you," he said
slowly, but with a certain quiet dignity which Key had never before
seen in his face, "because thar was suthin' about the size, and shape,
and fillin' out o' that shoe that kinder reminded me of some 'un; but
that some 'un--her as mought hev stood up in that shoe--ain't o' that
kind as would ever stand in the shoes of her as YOU know at all." The
rebuke, if such were intended, lay quite as much in the utter ignoring
of Key's airy gallantry and levity as in any conscious slur upon the
fair fame of his invented Dulcinea. Yet Key oddly felt a strong
inclination to resent the aspersion as well as Collinson's gratuitous
morality; and with a mean recollection of Uncle Dick's last evening's
scandalous gossip, he said sarcastically, "And, of course, that some
one YOU were thinking of was your lawful wife."
"It war!" said Collinson gravely.
Perhaps it was something in Collinson's manner, or his own
preoccupation, but he did not pursue the subject, and the conversation
lagged. They were nearing, too, the outer edge of the present
conflagration, and the smoke, lying low in the unburnt woods, or
creeping like an actual exhalation of the soil, blinded them so that at
times they lost the trail completely. At other times, from the intense
heat, it seemed as if they were momentarily impinging upon the burning
area, or were being caught in a closing circle. It was remarkable that
with his sudden accession of fortune Key seemed to lose his usual frank
and careless fearlessness, and impatiently questioned his companion's
woodcraft. There were intervals when he regretted his haste to reach
Skinner's by this shorter cut, and began to bitterly attribute it to
his desire to serve Collinson. Ah, yes! it would be fine indeed, if
just as he were about to clutch the prize he should be sacrificed
through the ignorance and stupidity of this heavy-handed moralist at
his side! But it was not until, through that moralist's guidance, they
climbed a steep acclivity to a second ridge, and were comparatively
safe, that he began to feel ashamed of his surly silence or surlier
interruptions. And Collinson, either through his unconquerable
patience, or possibly in a fit of his usual uxorious abstraction,
appeared to take no notice of it.
A sloping table-land of weather-beaten boulders now effectually
separated them from the fire on the lower ridge. They presently began
to descend on the further side of the crest, and at last dropped upon a
wagon-road, and the first track of wheels that Key had seen for a
fortnight. Rude as it was, it seemed to him the highway to fortune,
for he knew that it passed Skinner's and then joined the great
stage-road to Marysville,--now his ultimate destination. A few rods
