"The boss has said it." Don gave his wife the look one bestows upon some treasured thing. "Sit down—sit down! Don't look as if you expected to be lynched for it. The women folks run this house, Bill. So you struck it rich! You say you're sure it ain't just a fluke?"
Doris rose hastily, asking permission with her eyes.
"Fluke!" She glanced eloquently at Bill, then at her father. "You wait a minute. I'll show you whether it's a fluke. There. I hid it under my gloves because I was going to wait till morning before we said anything. Look at that, will you, Mother? And cast your critical glance at that, Dad Hunter!" She placed a piece of ore beside each plate and returned triumphantly to her seat.
A lump came into Bill's throat as he watched those two, slipping past middle age, never quite reaching rainbow's end except in love. Mrs. Don lifted the sample, looked at it, leaned and held it under the direct rays of the lamp, glanced diffidently at Bill, then looked questioningly across the table at Don.
"It's—gold, isn't it? Without my glasses I—but it looks——"
Don deliberately produced his reading glasses from an inner pocket of his vest, tucked the bows over his ears and picked up the specimen which Bill had chipped off the vein and given to Doris. Don moved his tongue in his cheek while he looked, slanting the rock so that the lamp shone on it. He was not a miner himself, but he had lived too long in Nevada not to know minerals fairly well. He pushed his glasses down his nose until he could look over them at Bill.
"How much of this have you got in sight, did you say?"
"I estimated it roughly at about five thousand dollars. When I first located the vein I mortared and panned enough to get a fair idea of how it was running. The vein averaged about ten inches, fairly uniform so far. The storm last night uncovered it so now it stands out clean from the side of the cut like an outcropping; or it did, before I covered it up. I didn't want to come away and leave it open. There are some strangers camped right beside me. Government men—but I didn't like the look of their packer."
"Didn't like the look—my goodness, Mother! The fellow came to the tent when I was there getting ready to start home, and he started snooping around in the corner where Bill had a lot of this ore. He was bound and de-ter-mined he'd see what was in the sack. I told him more than once to go—but I had to shoot into the ground beside him before he'd go. He went then, all right!"
Her mother looked alarmed. "Why, Doris! And where was Bill?"