"Paul's suggestion, dunno the reason; must be somethin' behind it, for he don't like you."
"That's mighty sad hearin'," Sudden answered gravely, but his eyes were mirthful. "I've had a dim suspicion of it my own self; I'll have to earn his better opinion."
"Shore," Snowy said, and the one word spoke volumes. "What I'm wonderin' is why yu hate Lesurge?" Sudden said quietly.
If the puncher had pulled a gun on him the prospector could not have been more amazed.
"Who told--?" he began and stopped. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he shrugged and said, "I dunno how you got wise, Jim--I thought I'd diddled 'em all, includin' Paul. Damn him, he's playin' me for a sucker an' thinks he can rob me--Mary. Ts young Mason white?"
"He's my friend, Snowy."
"That's good enough for me. We'll beat that devil, clever as he is, just the three of us. I'm agoin' to turn in, boy; gotta be astir early." For a while after the old man had rolled himself in his blanket, the cowboy sat smoking and staring into the fire, thinking over what had happened. His chance shot had hit the mark, plumb centre, and yet he could not say why he had made it. Snowy's attitude was easily explained: he suspected Lesurge meant to steal his mine, a deadly offence in the eyes of one to whom gold was a god. Sudden, of the same opinion, was glad to discover that the prospector was not the simple dupe he had appeared to be.
When they set out in the morning, the mare was disposed to be fractious, but the magic wand brought obedience. Snowy had found occasion to make vigorous use of it the previous day and, tough as the animal's hide was, her ribs were still sore.
"Learnin' sense, huh?" her master said, as he hauled himself into the saddle and pulled her remaining ear. The ugly hammer-head came round, upper lip curled, showing the big yellow teeth. "Like to chaw my leg, eh, you she-devil? Take that, an' git agoin'." They pushed on, thrusting through the thick shrubby undergrowth of the foothills, twisting and turning to avoid chunks of rock and large trees, and gradually mounting. Presently they were face to face with a wall of bare cliff, which, rising sheer from among the foliage, appeared an insuperable barrier. The mare stopped and turned a jeering eye upon her master; she evidently concluded he had lost his way. Snowy whanged her on the rump.
"G'wan, you hell-cat," he barked.
"Yu expectin' her to grow wings?" Sudden inquired.
Snowy grinned gleefully. "Got you guessin', has it?" he said. "Well, watch." He urged his horse forward, rode straight into a bush at the base of the cliff, and vanished. The cowboy followed, and the mystery was one no longer; behind the bush was an overlapping buttress of rock which concealed a narrow opening, The place to which it led was anything but lovely. A small cuplike depression hollowed out of the mountain-side, enclosed by almost vertical walls of stone, bare, save for ragged patches of moss, grass and cactus on the infrequent ledges. At the end opposite the entrance, a steep slope joined the wall of the hollow and the flattish top of a small mountain, and there was perched an enormous, cone-shaped boulder, leaning forward and seeming to overshadow the cup below. Snowy followed his companion's gaze.
"That's the Rocking Stone, that is--I named the mine after t her," he explained. "One o' Dame Nature's little jokes; a big wind'll make her bend over, but she rights herself--all the weight at the foot, I reckon, an' balanced just so. Gave me the creeps at first, but there ain't no danger." The sly look was in his eyes again. "Purty place, eh?"
"I've been in worse," was the answer.
"You ain't noticed the best of it," the old man said.
He pointed to a little waterfall, toppling over a ledge twenty feet up, to drop, glinting in the sunlight like a stream of jewels, into a shallow pool, thence along a narrow, stone-rimmed gully to vanish under the rock wall.
"Every convenience, you see, he said, and then, "Wonderin' where the gold is, son? Well, yo're standln' on it. Here's how I figure it out. Time was when this cup was a pool an' mebbe it's thousands o' years before the water bores an outlet big enough to empty her. All that while the stream's a-tricklin' in carryin' gold-dust, which, bein' heavy, remains when the water goes out. Under this rotted granite, is a layer o' sand an' gravel --the old bed o' the pool--an' it's the richest pay-dirt I ever saw." The puncher cast a speculative look at the mountain towering above them. "An' the gold comes from up there?" he questioned.
"Shorely," Snowy told him, and reading the other's thought, "The stream comes out's a crack in the rock 'bout a hundred yards up; Gawd on'y knows where she starts, but somewhere she runs through a deposit o' gold." He shook his head. "You'd have to take the blame' mountain to pieces to find it. Wanted for you to see this place, Jim. If anythin' happens to me, Mary'll need a friend."
"She can depend on two," the puncher said quietly. "Good," Snowy rejoined. "We'll git back now; I'll show you the other mine on the way home." Sudden's eyebrows rose.
"You didn't reckon I'd be dump enough to tell Paul about this one, did you?"
"I was kind o' wonderin'; it would be a risk."
"Risk?" Snowy repeated scornfully. "I'm believin' you. If that soulless devil knowed o' this, me an' Mary wouldn't last a week. To him, there's on'y one person in the world that matters--Paul Lesurge." Little as he liked the man, Sudden regarded this as an exaggeration; on the subject of his gold-mine the old fellow was undoubtedly a little mad, and liable to suspect everyone of designs on it. Yet he was trusting the puncher, of whom he knew little. Sudden smiled and sarcastically told himself that was the reason.
On the back trail, Snowy was more talkative--apparently the knowledge that his secret was safe had lifted a load from his mind. He chirped and chattered, mainly on his favourite topic--California.
Sudden noticed they were not returning by the way they had come. Snowy smiled when he mentioned it.
"This is a short cut--less'n half the distance," he confessed. "We could 'a' done it in a day, but we might 'a' been trailed." They had covered only a few miles when the prospector halted in a sandy, shallow ravine through which a small stream moved sluggishly. The ruins of a log shack and the disturbance of the ground in a number of places proclaimed human habitation at some time. The cowboy understood.
"This is the other one?" he guessed. "Is there gold here?"
"Enough to keep a fella hopin'," was the reply. "You see, this creek comes from the Rocking Stone, an' when the snow melts on the peaks she's strong enough to carry the dust even this far."
"But if somebody works up-stream . ?"
"She tunnels a bit away from the cliff-wall," Snowy said confidently. "I on'y struck her by accident--you gotta find the way in." As the old man had promised, the journey back was shorter and a little less difficult, and, by late afternoon, they reached Deadwood. They were approaching the long street between the timber-stripped sides of the gulch when a crowd of shouting, gesticulating men came marching towards them. In front strode a burly, coarse-faced miner carrying a coiled rope, and immediately behind him, firmly gripped by two others and minus his gun, stepped Gerry. The boy's face was pale, and no sound came from his close-clamped lips. At the sight of him, Sudden pulled his horse across the path of the mob anddropped the reins over the saddle-horn, leaving both hands free.
"What's goin' on?" he demanded.
"Suthin' you can't stop," the man with the rope retorted, though he looked a trifle uneasy. "We're aimin' to string this fella up soon's we find a tall enough tree."
"An' that goes," yelled a score of the others.
Sudden surveyed the half-circle of hard-featured, savage faces; dangerous men these, all armed, and liable to be reckless of consequences when inflamed by passion. Resting his hands on the pommel of his saddle, he said quietly: