With all this behind him, he went at the clearing of the road that connected him with his kind. Today as he laboured with pick and shovel and bar he was cheerful, though his thoughts clung to the subject of his father's death and the odd situation in which it had left him. He had fully expected to inherit properties and money to the extent of a hundred thousand dollars. He was not particularly resentful because this had not come to pass, for he never had been a pampered young man; but the mystery of his father's last message puzzled and chagrined him.
He would always remember Peter Drew as a peculiar man. He had been a kindly father, but a reticent one. There were many pages in his past that never had been opened to his son. Oliver was the child of Peter Drew's second wife. About the queer old Westerner's former marriage he had been told practically nothing.
Believing his father to have been of sound mind when he penned that last strange communication, Oliver could not hold that the situation which it imposed was not for the best. Surely old Peter Drew had had some wise reason for his act, and in the end Oliver would know what it was. He had been told to seek the Clinker Creek Country to learn the question that had puzzled his father for thirty years, to decide whether the proper answer was Yes or No, and communicate his decision to his father's lawyers. That was all. When in the wisdom which his father had supposed would be the natural result of his son's university training he had made his decision and placed it before these legal gentlemen, what would happen? Speculation over this led nowhere.
At first it had seemed to Oliver that the mission with which he had been intrusted was more or less a secret matter, and that he must keep still about it. Then as the staunch cow-pony bore him nearer and nearer to the Clinker Creek Country it gradually dawned upon him that, by so doing, he might stand a poor chance of even finding out what had puzzled his sire. To say nothing of the answer which he was to seek. It was then he decided that he had nothing to hide and must place his situation before the people of the country who would likely be able to help him. Hence his confidences to Mr. Damon Tamroy.
Tamroy had aided him not at all; but the 'Forty-niner, Old Dad Sloan, knew something. Dan Smeed, outlaw, highwayman, had owned a saddle and bridle like Oliver's. The old man had mysteriously mentioned the lost mine of Bolivio, and had said the settings in Oliver's conchas were gems. If only the old man could be made to talk!
The muffled thud of a horse's hoofs came between the strokes of Oliver's pick. With an odd and unfamiliar sensation he glimpsed a white horse and rider approaching through the pines.
It was she—Jessamy Selden—the black-haired, black-eyed girl of whom he reluctantly had thought so often since his first day in the Clinker Creek Country.
She was riding straight down the cañon, the white mare gingerly picking her way between boulders and snarls of driftwood. The girl looked up. Oliver felt that she saw him. Her ears could not have been insensible to the ring of his pick on the flinty stones. She did not leave the trail, however, but continued on in his direction.
He rested on the handle of his tool and waited.
"Good morning," he ventured, sweeping off his battered hat, as the mare stopped without pressure on the reins and gravely contemplated him.