"Your view is colored by your prejudices, Devlin," said Felder. "He's been a blackleg in the past—granted. But give the devil his due. As for the other ugly tale, there's no more evidence against him than there is against you or me!"
"They didn't find the body on my ground," had been the other's surly retort, "and I didn't clear out the day before, either!"
The phenomenon, however, whether credited or pooh-poohed, was a drawing card. More than a few found occasion to climb the mountain by the hillside trail that skirted the lonely cabin. These, as likely as not, saw Prendergast lounging in the doorway smoking, while the younger man worked, leading a trench along the brow of the hill to bring the water from its intake—which Harry's quick eye had seen was practicable—and digging through the shale and gravel to the bed-rock, to the sparse yellow grains that yielded themselves so grudgingly. Some of the pedestrians nodded, a few passed the time of day, and to each Harry returned his exact coin of salutation.
The spectacle of Hugh Stires, who had been used to pass his days in the saloons and his nights in even less becoming resorts, turned practical miner, added a touch of opera bouffe to the situation that, to a degree, modulated the rigor of dispraise. It was the consensus of opinion that the new Hugh Stires seemed vastly different from the old; that if he were "playing a game," it was a curious one.
The casual espionage Prendergast observed with a scowl, as he watched Harry's labors—when he was at the cabin, for after the first few days he spent most of his time in haunts of his own in the town, returning only at meal-time, gruff and surly. Harry, however, recognized nothing unusual in the curious glances. He worked on, intent upon his own problem of dark contrasts.
On the one side was a black record, exemplified in Prendergast, clouded infamy, a shuddering abhorrence of his past self as he saw it through the pitiless lens of public opinion; on the other was a grim constancy of purpose, a passionate wish to reconstruct the warped structure of life of which he found himself the tenant, days of healthful, peace-inspiring toil, a woman's face that threaded his every thought. As he wielded his pick in the trench or laboriously washed out the few glistening grains that now were to mean his daily sustenance, he turned often to gaze up the slope where, set in its foliage, the glass roof of the sanatorium sparkled softly through the Indian haze. Strange that the sight should mysteriously suggest the face that haunted him!
Emmet Prendergast saw the abstracted regard as he came up the trail from the town. He was in an ugly humor. The bag of gold-dust which he had shown to Harry he had not returned to the hiding-place in the wall, and with this in his pocket the faro-table had that day tempted him. The pouch was empty now.
Harry's back was toward him, and the gold-pan in which he had been washing the gravel lay at his feet. With a noiseless, mirthless laugh Prendergast stole into the cabin and reached down from the shelf the bottle into which each day Harry had poured his scanty findings. He weighed it in his hand—almost two ounces, a little less than twenty dollars. He hastily took the empty bag from his pocket.
But just then a shadow darkened the doorway and Harry entered. He saw the action, and, striding forward, took the bottle from the other's hand.
Prendergast turned on him, a sinister snarl under his affectation of surprise. "Can't you attend to your own rat-killing?" he growled. "I guess I've got a right to what I need."