It was up on the ridge, where the white granite of the summit came into contact with the burnt limestone and schist; and, of all the rich mines, the Homestake was the best, until the cloudburst came along and spoiled all of them. Wilhelmina still remembered how the great flood had passed the town, moving boulders as if they were pebbles; but not until it reached the place where she stood had it done irretrievable damage. The roadbed was washed out, but the streambed remained, and the banks from which to fill in more dirt; but when the flood struck the Gorge it backed up into a lake, for the narrow defile was choked. Trees and rocks and rumbling boulders had piled up against its entrance, holding the waters back like a dam; and when they broke 81through they sluiced everything before them, gouging the canyon down to the bedrock. Now twelve years had passed by and only a hazardous trail threaded the Gorge which had once been a highway.
Wilhelmina gazed up the valley and sighed again, for since that terrific cloudburst she had been stranded in Jail Canyon like a piece of driftwood tossed up by the flood. Nothing happened to her, any more than to the piñon logs which the waters had wedged high above the stream, and as she returned home down the Gorge she almost wished for another flood, to float them and herself away. No one came by there any more, the trail was so poor, and yet her father still clung to the mine; but a flood would either fill up the Gorge with débris or make even him give up hope. She sank down by the cool pool and put her feet in the water, dabbling them about like a wilful child; but at a shout from below she rose up a grown woman, for she knew it was Dusty Rhodes.
He came on up the creekbed with his burros on the trot, hurling clubs at the laggards as he ran; and when they stopped short at the sight of Wilhelmina he almost rushed them over her. But a burro is a creature of lively imagination, to whom the unknown is always terrible; and at a fresh outburst from Dusty the whole outfit took to the brush, leaving him face to face with his erstwhile partner.
“Oh, hello, hello!” he called out gruffly. “Say, did Hungry Bill go through here? He was jest down to Blackwater, buying some grub at the store, 82and he paid for it with rock that was half gold! So git out of the road, my little girl–I’m going up to prospect them hills!”
“Don’t you call me your little girl!” called back Billy angrily. “And Hungry Bill hasn’t got any mine!”
“Oh, he ain’t, hey?” mocked Dusty, leaving his burros to browse while he strode triumphantly up to her. “Then jest look at that, my–my fine young lady! I got it from the store-keeper myself!”
He handed her a piece of green and blue quartz, but she only glanced at it languidly. The memory of his perfidy on a previous occasion made her long to puncture his pride, and she passed the gold ore back to him.
“I’ve seen that before,” she said with a sniff, “so you can stop driving those burros so hard. It came from Wunpost’s mine.”
“Wunpost!” yelled Dusty Rhodes, his eyes getting big; and then he spat out an oath. “Who told ye?” he demanded, sticking his face into hers, and she stepped away disdainfully.
“Hungry Bill,” she said, and watched him writhe as the bitter truth went home. “You think you’re so smart,” she taunted at last, “why don’t you go out and find one for yourself? I suppose you want to rush in and claim a half interest in his strike and then sell out to old Eells. I hope he kills you, if you try to do it–I would, if I were him. What’d you do with that five thousand dollars?”