Philip got up and held out his hand.
“I am sorry I’m going away, because I’d like to be within call if you should need me. If you should move into a house, or leave Denver, will you let me know? A note addressed to me in care of the railroad office will be either forwarded or held until I come back.”
“I’ll write,” she promised, and the quick veiling of the dark eyes told him that she knew very well what he meant by her possible need.
“And about this young scapegrace who tried to hold me up: what you have suggested never occurred to me until you spoke of it. But if you think I ought to offer to take him along into the mountains, I don’t know but I’ll do it. It wouldn’t be any crazier than the things a lot of other people are doing in this mining-mad corner of the world just now.”
“Oh, you mustn’t take me too seriously. I have no right to tell you what you should do. But I did have a glimpse of what it might mean. I’m going to wish you good luck—the very best of luck. If you really want to be rich, I hope you’ll find one of these beautiful ‘bonanzas’ people are talking about; find it and live happily ever after. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Philip; and when she disappeared behind the tent flap, he picked his way out of the campers’ square and turned his steps townward.
It was after he had walked the five squares westward on Champa and the six northward down Seventeenth, and was turning into Blake, with the American House only a block distant, that a girlish figure slipped out of a doorway shadow, caught step with him, and slid a caressing arm under his with a murmured, “You look lonesome, baby, and I’m lonesome, too. Take me around to Min’s and stake me to a bottle of wine. I’m so thirsty I don’t know where I’m going to sleep to-night.”
Philip freed himself with a twist that had in it all the fierce virtue of his Puritan ancestry. Being fresh from a very human contact with a young woman of another sort, this appeal of the street-girl was like a stumbling plunge into muddy water. Backing away from the temptation which, he told himself hotly, was no temptation at all, he walked on quickly, and had scarcely recovered his balance when he entered the lobby of the hotel. Almost immediately he found Bromley, sprawled in one of the lounging chairs, deep in the enjoyment of a cigar which he waved airily as he caught sight of Philip.
“Benedicite, good wrestler! Pull up a chair and rest your face and hands,” he invited. Then, with a cheerful smile: “Why the pallid countenance? You look as though you’d just seen a ghost. Did some other fellow try to hold you up?”
Philip’s answering smile was a twisted grimace. “No; it was a woman, this time.”