I was beginning to get a little better hold upon my nerves by this time and I laughed.
"Bob is needing the rest, all right, but he will murder me when he finds out that you've been here and I didn't call him. If you want to save my life, you'd better reconsider."
"No; don't call him," she insisted. "It isn't at all necessary, and—and perhaps you can tell me what I want to know—what I ought to know before I——" the sentence trailed off into nothing and she began again rather breathlessly: "Mr. Bertrand, can you—can you satisfy me in any way that you and your two friends have a legal right to this claim you are working? It's a perfect—impertinence in me, to ask, I know, but——"
"It is a fair question," I hastened to assure her; "one that any one might ask. With the proper means at hand—maps and records—I could very easily answer it."
"But—but there may have been mistakes made," she suggested.
"Doubtless there were; but we haven't made them. The Lawrenceburg Company owns the ground on two sides of us, and for some considerable distance beyond us toward the head of the gulch; but I can assure you that our title to the Little Clean-Up is perfectly good and legal in every way."
"It is going to be disputed," she broke in hurriedly. "Mr. Blackwell has talked about it—before me, just as if I didn't count. Telegrams have been passing back and forth, and the Lawrenceburg owners in the East have given Mr. Blackwell full authority to take such steps as he may think best. I—that is, Daddy and I—have known Mr. Barrett for a long time, and I couldn't let this thing happen without giving him just a little warning. Some kind of legal proceedings have already been begun, and you are to be driven off—to-morrow."
"Oh, I guess not; not so suddenly as all that," I ventured to say. There were many questions to come crowding in, but I could scarcely expect the assayer's daughter to answer them. Her father had plainly declared his belief that we were stealing Lawrenceburg ore and planning a blackmailing scheme: had he told Blackwell? The query practically answered itself. If Blackwell had been told that we were salting our claim with ore stolen from the Lawrenceburg sheds, the "legal proceedings" would have been a simple arrest-warrant and a search for stolen property. Had Everton told his daughter? This was blankly incredible. If he had told her that we were thieves, she would never have gone so far aside from her childhood hatred of duplicity and wrong-doing as to come and warn us.
"I was afraid you might not believe me," she said, with a little catch in her voice; and then: "I can't blame you; after what you have suf—after all that has happened."
If I hadn't been completely lost in admiration for her keen sense of justice, and more or less bewildered by her beauty and her nearness, I might have caught the significance of what she was trying to say. But I didn't.