"Yes," said Jimmy, reflectively, "if it's the one that was Barbara last time, I guess I do. You have been finding out the rest of it since you met her at the ranch? She was up yonder ten minutes ago."
He pointed to a forest-covered ridge above the mine, but Brooke, looking up with all his eyes, saw nothing but the serried ranks of climbing pines. As it happened, however, the girl, who stood amidst their shadows, saw him, and smiled. She had noticed Jimmy's pointing hand, and fancied she knew what his companion was looking for.
"Then you are certainly mistaken," he said. "There is nowhere she could be staying at within several leagues of the Canopus."
"There's the Englishman's old ranch house Devine bought. It's quite a good one."
Brooke started a little, and Jimmy, who was much quicker of wit than some folks believed, noticed it.
"She certainly couldn't be staying there. It's quite out of the question," he said, with an assurance that was chiefly intended to convince himself.
"Well," said Jimmy, who appeared to ruminate, "I guess you know best. Still, I can't think of any other place, unless she's living in a cave."
Brooke said nothing further, but signed to the men who were waiting, and proceeded to roll the shattered rock out of the course of his flume. He felt it was certain that Jimmy was mistaken, for the only other conclusion appeared preposterous, and he could not persuade himself to consider it. Still, he thought of the girl with the brown eyes often while he swung axe and hammer during the rest of the afternoon, and when he strolled up the hillside after the six o'clock supper he was thinking of her still. He climbed until the raw gap of the workings was lost among the pines, and then lay down.
The evening was still and cool, for the chill of the snow made itself felt once the sunlight faded from the valley. Now and then a sound came up faintly from the mine, but that was not often, and a great quietness reigned among the pines, which towered above him, two hundred feet to their topmost sprays, in serried ranks. They were old long before the white man first entered that wild mountain land, while, as he lay there in the scented dimness among their wide-girthed trunks, all that concerned the Canopus and its pounding stamp-heads slipped away from him. He was worn out in body, but his mind was clear and free, and, lying still, unlighted pipe in hand, he gave his fancy the rein, and, forgetting Devine and the flume, dreamed of what had once been his, and might, if he could make his purpose good, be his again.
The sordid details of the struggle he had embarked upon faded from his memory, for the cold silence of the mountains seemed to banish them. It gave him courage and tranquillity, and, for the time at least, nothing seemed unattainable, while through all his wandering fancies moved a vision of a girl in a long white dress, who looked down upon him fearlessly from a plunging pony's back. That was the recollection he cherished most, though he had also seen her with diamonds gleaming in her dusky hair in the Vancouver opera-house.