“The white man is wise to take the one chance that is his,” said the Indian. “Come. To-morrow, perhaps, you will find gold.”
Through the remaining weeks of the winter Hugh Edwards toiled with all his strength for the grains of yellow metal that the Indian secretly permitted him to find. Day and night the knowledge of the Mine with the Iron Door tortured him. Many times he was tempted to abandon all hope, and, by surrendering himself to the officers of the law, escape at least the torment of his strange situation. But always he was held by the one chance—to-morrow he might find the gold that meant freedom and Marta and love.
And at last, one day in spring, when the mountain slopes again were bright with blossoms—when the gold of the buckbean shone in the glades, and whispering bells were nodding in the shadows of the cañon walls—when the glory of the ocotillo, the flaming sword, was on the foothills, and “our Lord’s candles” again fit the mesas with their torches of white, Hugh Edwards looked up from his work in the gulch to see a stranger.
CHAPTER XXIII
SONORA JACK
“But here is the amazing thing—Sonora Jack knows more about these two old prospectors and their partnership daughter than even you know.”
WHEN he saw that he was discovered, the man who was watching Hugh Edwards came leisurely forward. At the same instant Hugh thought that he glimpsed another figure farther away on the mountain side.
The stranger explained his presence in the neighborhood by saying that he was hunting and had wandered farther from his camp than he had intended. For nearly an hour he and Edwards visited in the manner of men who meet by chance in the lonely open places. Then with a careless adios he went on his way down the cañon.
When Hugh, at the close of his day’s work, went up to the cabin, Natachee was not at home. But when the white man had finished his supper the Indian appeared, coming in his usual silent, unexpected way. As he set about preparing his own supper, Natachee said:
“You had visitors to-day.”
Hugh was too accustomed to the red man’s uncanny way of knowing things to be in the least surprised at his companion’s remark.