But the stocky figure that appeared in the doorway was not that of the leader of the jumpers; it was a far more welcome apparition—the figure of the man who, up to that time, had bought, sold and operated more mines than any other promoter in Colorado—Stephen Drew.
“Well, well!” he said, coming in to shake the snow from his poncho and to stamp it from his feet, “I thought I’d find you somewhere up in this gulch! Found out what old winter can do to you in the Rockies, haven’t you?” and he shook hands with the exiles, and not less heartily with Garth than with the two younger men, saying: “You here, too, Jim? If I had known that, I wouldn’t have been quite so anxious about these two young tenderfoots.”
Philip sat down on his bunk and he was gasping again.
“Are—are the trails open, Mr. Drew?” he stammered.
“They were day before yesterday, when we crossed the main range, but they will be blocked again for a few days, now. However, that doesn’t matter. I knew you must be running short of supplies, so I brought a pack train along. I left the outfit making camp in the valley below and rode on ahead to see if I could locate you.”
Bromley laughed happily.
“You look like an angel out of heaven to us, Mr. Drew,” he bubbled. “We’d eaten the last of our grub-stake and were starving when Jim killed a deer and saved our lives. How did you find the way in?”
The promoter planted himself comfortably upon Garth’s bunk, and he was smiling genially when he said: “We had to use a little diplomacy. One of the Neighbors gang took one drink too many and spilled the beans. We got hold of him and gave him his choice between going to jail and coming along with us as a guide. He’s with the outfit now. But tell me—have you got a mine to show me?”
It was Garth who got in the first word about the “Little Jean.”
“You’re shoutin’,” he said. “These boys’ve got a li’l’ bonanza, right! There’s enough rich, free-millin’ ore on the dump to run you crazy. We’re in a good piece on the vein, and she’s a-holdin’ up like a lady. All these boys is a-needin’ now is somebody to back ’em with a li’l’ capital, and——”