“And your mother and sisters?”
“They wanted me to stay, of course. They couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t retire and settle down at home as a solid citizen; why I should want to go back to the outlandish West.”
“Well, why should you?” Bromley asked, with his most disarming smile.
“You know the answer to that as well as I do, Harry. In the old rut at home I had to be once more a Pharisee among the people who had known me from childhood, and one week of that was enough. Another week of it would have stifled me.”
The play-boy’s smile broadened into a grin. “There is plenty of breathing room out here, if that is what you want.”
“Not room enough—in Denver.”
“No? Whereabouts, then?”
Philip picked up a badly spelled letter written in pencil and glanced over it.
“This is from Jim Garth. He has found a prospect up somewhere near the Mount of the Holy Cross, and he asks me if I will grub-stake him for a winter’s work on it. I shall leave this evening to put in the winter with Jim. He says his claim is at altitude eleven thousand and something. There ought to be breathing space enough up there.”
“But why, Phil?”