CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE VALUE OF A HUNCH
The resiliency of youth, aided by the allurement of riches to be gained by digging, drove Gary back up the bluff to his work. Here again circumstances had forced him to continue where he would voluntarily have left off. In digging out the body of Steve Carson, Gary had dug completely through the broken stuff to a continuation of the vein and its contact beyond.
He felt that he understood in a general way what had happened five years ago. Steve Carson had undoubtedly discovered the gold-bearing quartz and had started to sink on the vein much as Gary had done. The calamity of a cave-in—or perhaps a slide—had overtaken him while he was at work underground. He had never known what hit him, which was a mercy. And since no one in the country had heard of the prospect up on the bluff, the discovery of his body would never have been made if Gary had not followed the cat up there and so stumbled upon the vein.
He thought he also understood now why Faith had shown her strange penchant for that particular spot on the bluff. Monty had told him that the cat had belonged to Steve Carson. She had undoubtedly been in the habit of following Steve Carson to work, just as she followed Gary. Very likely she had been somewhere near at the time when her master was killed. That she should continue the habit of going each day to the spot where she had last seen him was not unlikely. So another small mystery was cleared to Gary’s satisfaction. Save for its grim history, Johnnywater Cañon was likely to drop at last to the dead level of commonplace respectability.
If Steve Carson had worked in an open shaft that had been filled by a slide, the opening had been effectually blocked afterward. For on the surface Gary could see no evidence whatever, among the piled bowlders, of an opening beneath. And the roof, when he lifted his candle to examine it, looked to be a smooth expanse of rock.
For himself, he pronounced his own incline shaft safe from any similar catastrophe. He had started it at the extreme edge of the slide, and above it the rocks seemed firmly in place. He was working under dangerous conditions, it is true; but the danger lay in using five-year-old dynamite. Still, he must chance it or let the development of Patricia’s claim stand still.
Pondering the necessary steps to protect Patricia in case anything happened to him, Gary wrote a copy of his location notice, declared the necessary location work done, described the exact spot as closely as possible—lining it up with blazed trees in the grove behind the cabin, and placed the papers in his suit case. That, he knew, would effectually forestall any claim-jumping; unless James Blaine Hawkins or some other crook appeared first on the scene and ransacked his belongings, destroying the papers and placing their own location notices on the claim. He felt that the danger of such villainy was slight and not worth considering seriously. Monty would probably ride over as soon as he had finished his work in Pahranagat Valley; and when he did, Gary meant to tell him all about it and take him up and show him the claim.
Monty would keep the secret for him, he was sure. He did not want Patricia to know anything about it until he was sure that the vein was not going to peter out before it yielded at least a modest fortune.
One night soon after he had made these elaborate arrangements, Gary woke sweating from a nightmare. He was so sure that James Blaine Hawkins was rummaging through his suit case, looking for the information of the mine, that he swung out of bed, kicking viciously with both feet. When they failed to land upon the man he believed was there, Gary drew back and kicked again at a different angle.
Not a sound save Gary’s breathing disturbed the midnight quiet of the cabin. Gary waited, wondering foolishly if he had been dreaming after all. He leaned and reached for his trousers, found a match and lighted it. The tiny blaze flared up and showed him an empty cabin. It was a dream, then—but a disagreeably vivid one, that impressed upon Gary’s mind the thought that James Blaine Hawkins, returning while he was at work up the bluff, would be very likely to go prowling. If he found and read Gary’s explicit description of the mine and the way to find it, together with his opinion of its richness, James Blaine Hawkins might be tempted to slip up there and roll a rock down on Gary.