His hand was fumbling inside the sack when Doris fired. Hunkered down on his heels, Al gave a grotesque leap straight into the air, as the bullet spatted into the earthen floor and kicked dirt over his toes. He came down sidewise, sprawled awkwardly and clawing to get up.
"That's just a hint," Doris announced dispassionately through the drifting little smoke cloud. "In about one minute——"
Al went out on hands and knees and picked himself up and ran. Doris followed him out, saw him duck into his own tent and laughed a little.
Al, too, was laughing silently, showing his broken, tobacco-stained teeth. He was staring gloatingly down at the piece of ore he had dragged from the sack, hidden in the palm of his big hand.
Doris returned to the tent and stood looking reflectively down at the tilted sack. She stooped, reached inside it and brought out a lump of ore. She frowned over it, her under lip between her teeth.
"Bill certainly needs a guardian," she said to herself. "Leaving half a sack of this stuff right where the first sneak thief could help himself! That fellow must have suspected it was here, too. I'll bet he never lost any tobacco in here—but it's easy enough to find out."
She made a thorough search of the corner and convinced herself that Al had been lying to her and that his sole purpose was to get his hands on that ore. She tilted the sack again, spilling the contents out on the ground. She had no fear that Al would return. With her lifelong knowledge of the desert had come the understanding of desert types of men, and she needed no explanation of Al Freeman. She knew him for what he was: a coward at heart, mean and treacherous and capable of crime that might be hidden. She did not know that he had carried off a piece of the ore, but she knew that he suspected its richness. Only a tenderfoot will cumber his tent with valueless samples of mineral,—and Bill Dale was no tenderfoot.
"He thought he could fool me," she analyzed the incident contemptuously. "Or maybe he thought I'd be scared to say anything to him." She sorted the pieces of ore, choosing those that showed the largest specks and splotches of gold. She fondled them, turned them to the light, feasted her eyes upon them.
"Rich! Bill's rich, this minute. A millionaire, for all we know," she mused. "And maybe it's like this on my claim, too. Dear old Bill—he surely deserves a fortune. How he's worked to find it—and he's loved me all the time and wanted to strike it so we—I'm going to make him leave the working of the mine to some one else. He can afford to take life easy now—we'll live in Los Angeles, or maybe we'll travel——"
She was sitting cross-legged, with her lap full of rich pieces of quartz, when Bill looked in upon her. She scrambled up, her two hands clutching the prettiest specimens. Bill was laughing at her, his eyes adoring. Doris pulled her fine eyebrows together and shook her head at him.