"Well, fortunately for you——" Doris bit her lip and left the sentence unfinished. She liked Bill Dale, but—there would always be unfinished sentences concerning her regard for him. A prospector is, paradoxically, not a good prospect for a girl. Doris had seen the poor, withered wives of miners who were forever just on the eve of striking something rich.
Walking beside Bill, she thought of the wistful eyes and the draggled, cheap clothes of certain women she had met. Some of them even wore overalls and helped dig. Bill had been prospecting ever since she first met him at a dance in Goldfield. He had talked optimistically of his prospects then. He would always talk in the same vein. Always just going to strike rich ore,—never actually getting more than a bare living; if one could call grub and a tent a living.
"Fortunately for me—what?" Bill was in the mood to bring about a crisis of some kind between them. He considered that he had gone too far now to retreat.
"Fortunately for you, your friends have more regard for you than you have for yourself," Doris amended glibly. "Is it much farther, Bill? Because I really must——"
"It's just up around this first turn." Bill's face sobered a bit. After all, Doris didn't seem to care much, one way or the other. She didn't seem very enthusiastic over her claim; didn't she know he would take care of the development work for her—at least the assessment work?
"If a slide hasn't covered it up," he said heavily. "I wanted to show you what I—what I've got. Then——"
"Well, you know I'm no expert, Bill," Doris reminded him lightly. "I can tell silver—when it's in spoons. And gold is jewelry——"
Bill caught her arm, stopping her perforce. His grip left marks in her soft flesh. She looked at him, startled, and paled before the fixed stare in his eyes. He lifted a shaking finger and pointed.
Bill's cut in the side of the gulch had not been filled by any slide of the soft gravel higher up the slope. Instead it stood there naked, deep, clean as a dog's tooth. Even from where they stood the metal gleamed yellow in the ten-inch vein of quartz laid bare to the sunlight.
Slowly, almost reverently, Bill went forward, still holding the girl's arm in his strong, unconsciously painful grip. He led her into the cut, stooped and broke off a point of the vein with his fingers where his last shot had seamed the quartz. He laid the gold-flecked piece in her hand. He looked at her standing there so close with the symbol of a great fortune in her hand,—the symbol too of his worshipful love.