"Yes," said Alton, "for a time, and I had my hands full with other things when Jimmy went back again. He had piled up a few dollars and left the woman behind him. He took the trail with a good outfit and a pack-horse, but he didn't come down again, and when Mrs. Jimmy got anxious I went up to look for him. It was a good while before I found him sitting under a pine, and he had found the silver, though it wasn't much use to him."

"Was it a rich vein?" said the girl.

"Yes," said Alton solemnly, "I think it was, from the specimens he had brought along, but, and it's difficult sometimes to see why things should happen that way, he couldn't tell me where it was. Jimmy was dead, you see."

The girl shivered visibly. "It must have been horrible."

"No," said Alton gravely. "He was sitting there very quiet in the snow with his hand frozen on the rifle, and there was a big dead panther not far away; but I was more sorry for Mrs. Jimmy than I was for him.

Jimmy hadn't always been a trail-chopper, and one could see he had been carrying a heavy load he brought out from the old country. I think he was tired."

"And the silver still lies hidden up there?" said Miss Deringham.

Alton nodded. "Yes," he said. "I've hunted for it twice, but couldn't find Jimmy's trail. By and by, and because the woman wants it, I'm going back again."

"But it would belong to anybody who found it now," said Miss Deringham.

"No," said Alton quietly. "A half of what I get there belongs to Mrs.

Jimmy. The dead man has a claim."

"I am not sure that most men would think so. You are generous," said the girl.

"No," said Alton. "I'm just where I can, and it hurts me to owe anybody anything, whether it's a favour, or the other thing."

Miss Deringham understood him, and reflected as she glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes that her father would do well if he dealt openly with this man. She fancied he could be remorseless in a reckoning, and she had now and then of late had unpleasant suspicions respecting Deringham's intentions concerning him.

Alton took up the paddle, and the pair found Deringham waiting them when they landed. They crossed the valley together, and the girl, who had seen little of industrial activity, became interested when at her father's desire they followed Alton into the mill. A cloud of pungent smoke hung about it, and the steady pounding of an engine jarred through the monotone of the river, which was low just then, while there was a pleasant fragrance in the open-sided building where brawny men moved amidst the whirling dust with the precision of the machines they handled. Alice Deringham could see with untrained eyes that there was no waste of effort here. The great logs that slid in at one end passed straight forward over the rattling rollers, and made no deviation until they went out as planking. Silent men and whirring saws, whose strident scream changed to a deeper humming as they rent into the great redwood trunks, alike did their work with swift efficiency, and once more the girl glanced with a little wonder at the man who had organized it all.

"This appears to be a remarkably well-laid-out mill," said her father.

Alton laughed a little. "We shall have a bigger one by and by," he said. "The only thing I'm proud of is the planer, and she cost me a pile of dollars. I had to cut down all round before I could buy the thing, and then I pulled her all to pieces, and fixed her up myself."

Alice Deringham followed her father towards a big, humming machine that was tearing off the surface of the planks fed to it and flinging them out polished into whiteness. Alton glanced at it admiringly.

"Yes, I'm proud of that," he said. "It was a tight fit buying her, and now she's saving me dollars every day." Then he turned to a stooping man. "You're crowding her a little."

Alice Deringham noticed the resentment in the man's face, which was not a pleasant one, and that, in place of relaxing the pressure, he seemed to thrust a little more strenuously upon the plank he guided; but that was all she saw, for the next moment there was a crash and a loud whirring, and a cloud of woody dust was flung all over her.

Alton sprang forward through it, and a big leather belt suddenly stopped, but the girl could never clearly remember what happened next, for the dust still whirled about her. There, however, appeared to be a brief altercation, and as Alton moved towards him the other man dropped his hand to his belt. Guessing what the action meant, Alice Deringham shrank back with a little shiver, and her father appeared to grasp the man's shoulder. Alton swayed suddenly sideways, and then hurled himself forward, while next moment two men fell violently against the wrecked machine. One of them seemed to be helpless in the grasp of the other, and staggering clear of the planer they went reeling through the mill. Then there was a splash in the river, and Alton returned alone, breathless and somewhat white in face.

"Sorry, but there was no other way out of it," he said a trifle hoarsely. "Now I've got to size up the ruin, if you'll excuse me."

Deringham turned away with his daughter in time to see a dripping object crawl out on the opposite side of the river. "Are you still pleased with your tame bear?" he said ironically.

The girl laughed a little, though her colour was perhaps a trifle higher than usual. "There is a good deal of the beast still unsubdued in him," she said.

Deringham nodded. "Still, he had some provocation, and I think he was right. So far as I could follow the discussion, the other man meant to question his ability to dismiss him, with the pistol."

Alice Deringham said nothing further upon the subject until Alton joined them as they sat out on the verandah that night. "You are not pleased with me?" he said.

"There is nothing to warrant me telling you so, and I may have been mistaken," said the girl reflectively.

"No," said Alton, "that's the pity; but couldn't you remember just now and then that you are friends with me?"

"Things of this kind make it a little difficult," said Miss Deringham.

"Well," said Alton, "that machine cost me twelve months' grim self-denial, and the fellow broke it out of temper because I spoke to him."

"It was," said Miss Deringham, "sufficiently exasperating, but was the rest justifiable because you were a stronger or bolder man than him?"

Alton laughed a little. "You don't understand. I did it because I was afraid," said he. "Now if I hadn't been, I'd have backed that man right into the river without touching him."

The girl glanced at him and then lapsed into a ripple of laughter.

"I'm afraid I must give you up," said she.

Just then Deringham came into the verandah, and Alton turned towards him. "It's a little difficult to put it as I would like to, but I'm glad it was you. You know what I mean."

Deringham appeared a trifle embarrassed. "I'm not sure that you are indebted to me at all," he said. "I only seized his shoulder, and you would not have expected me to look on?"

Alton shook his head. "I don't think he would have missed if you hadn't done it, and I will not forget," he said. "This thing will always count for a good deal between you and me."

He went away, and Alice Deringham glanced at her father with a flush in her face. "I did not understand before. The man had a pistol and you took it from him?"

"No," said Deringham, with a curious little laugh. "I meant to knock his arm up, and am not sure that I did it. It was, considering all things, a somewhat disinterested action."

CHAPTER VIII

HALLAM'S CONFEDERATE

It was about the middle of the afternoon of the day following Alton's affray with the workman when the cook came limping into the verandah of the Somasco ranch, where Deringham leaned, cigar in hand, against a pillar talking to his daughter. She lay in a hide chair Alton had found for her, listening more to the drowsy roar of the river than to her father, but she lifted her head when the man appeared. He carried a tray whereon were displayed a badly dinted metal teapot of considerable size, two large, flat cakes of bread, a can of condensed milk, and a saucer swimming with partially melted butter, which had resolved itself into little lumps of whitish grease and a thin golden fluid under the afternoon sun. He laid them on the table, and after deftly picking out one or two dead flies from the butter turned to the girl with a grin in which pride was evident, though it was apparently meant to be deprecatory.

"I guess this is the kind of thing you were used to in the old country, Miss," he said. "You have only got to tell me if you would fancy a piece of cold pork or other fixings."

Alice Deringham dared not glance at her father, who seemed to be gazing fixedly down the valley, but her lips quivered a little as she turned towards the man.

"I do not think we shall want anything else," she said with a serenity that cost her an effort, though it was excellently assumed.

The man limped away with the tray, though he stopped again at the foot of the stairway. "If you take a notion of that pork after all, hammer on the iron roofing sheet there, and I'll bring it right away," he said.

Alice Deringham waited until he was out of sight, and then lay back in her chair and laughed when her father glanced at her with a little grim smile.

"Savages, my dear!" he said. "Still, their intentions are evidently kindly, which is unfortunate because it involves us in a difficulty."

"A difficulty?"

Deringham nodded. "I have a suspicion that our estimable kinsman, who seems to consider that what is good enough for Somasco should content anybody, might be offended if we slighted his hospitality, and that teapot apparently contains at least three pints of strong green tea,"

he said. "I do not know whether you feel equal to consuming half of it, but if it is the same as I had at breakfast I must be excused. One could also fancy from their solidity that those cups had been intended for breaking stones with."