“Yes,” she smiled and hid it in her dress; but as he started for the door she stopped him.
“You might like to know,” she said, “that Drusilla has received an engagement. She is substitute soprano in a new Opera Company that is being organized to tour the big cities. I’m sorry you didn’t see her.”
“Yes,” answered Denver, “I’m sorry myself–but that never bought a man anything. Just send her the letter and–well, goodby.”
He blundered out the door and down the steps, and there stretched the road before him. In the evening he was as far as Whitlow’s Well and a great weight seemed lifted from his breast. He was free again, free to wander where he pleased, free to make friends with any that he met–for if the 222prophecy was not true in regard to his mine it was not true regarding his friends. And how could any woman, by cutting a pack of cards and consulting the signs of the zodiac, predict how a man would die? Denver made himself at home with a party of hobo miners who had come in from the railroad below, and that night they sat up late, cracking jokes and telling stories of every big camp in the West. It was the old life again, the life that he knew and loved, drifting on from camp to camp with every man his friend. Yet as he stretched out that night by the flickering fire he almost regretted the change. He was free from the great fear, free to make friends with whom he would; but, to win back the love of the beautiful young artist, he would have given up his freedom without a sigh.
His sleep that night was broken by strange dreams and by an automobile that went thundering by, and in the morning as they cooked a mulligan together he saw two great motor trucks go past. They were loaded with men and headed up the canyon and Denver began to look wild. A third machine appeared and he went out to flag it but the driver went by without stopping; and so did another, and another. He rushed after the next one and caught it on the hill but the men pushed him roughly from the running board. They were armed and he knew by their hard-bitten faces that it was another party of jumpers.
“Where are you going?” he yelled but they left him by the road without even a curse for an 223answer. Well, he knew then; they were going to Final, and Murray had fooled him again. Denver had suspected from the first that Murray’s shutdown was a ruse, to shake down the public for their stock; and now he knew it, and that if his mine was jumped again it would be held against all comers. Another automobile whirled by; and then came men that he knew, the miners who owned claims in the district.
“What’s the matter?” he called but they would not stop to talk, simply shouted and beckoned him on. Denver started, right then, without stopping for breakfast or to pick up his hobo’s pack; and soon he caught a ride with a party of prospectors whose claims he had once freed from jumpers.
“It’s a big strike!” they clamored, hauling him in and rushing on. “Old Murray struck copper in his tunnel! Rich? Hell, yes!” And they gave him all the details as the machine lurched along up the road.
Murray had struck another ore-body, entirely different from the first one–the copper had come out the drill-holes like pure metal–and then he had shut down and rushed the machine-men away before they could tell of the strike. But they had got loose down in Moroni and showed the drill-dust and every man that saw it had piled into his machine and joined the rush for Murray’s.
“Jumped again!” muttered Denver and when he arrived in Pinal he found his mine swarming with men. They had built a barricade and run a pipe 224line down the hill to pump up water from the creek, and when he appeared they ordered him off without showing so much as a head. And he went, for the swiftness of the change had confused him; he was whipped before he began. There was no use to fight or to put up a bluff, the men behind the wall were determined; and while, according to law, they held no title the law was far away. It was a weapon for rich men who could afford to pay the price; but how could he, a poor man, hope to win back his claim when it was held by Bible-Back Murray? He went down to the store, where the Miners’ Meeting was assembled, and beckoned Bunker aside.