"I'm going to talk straight, Geoffrey. Your friend told me the whole thing, and I agree with his opinion. See here, you are safe for life if you hold fast to what you have got now—and the Lord knows whether we will ever be successful in the cañon. Of course the money would help us, but it isn't sufficient to make victory dead certain, and it would be a drop in the bucket if we came down with a bang, as we may very well do. Even considering what's at stake, I couldn't let you make the plunge without protesting."
"If I had ten times as much, or ten times as little, it would all go after the rest," replied Geoffrey. "I appreciate your good intentions, but you can't, and never will, convince me, so there's no use talking. You will, in the meantime, say not a word to Miss Savine on the subject."
Next morning Geoffrey said to his guest:
"I want you to write out a telegram to your partner in England. Yonder's a mounted messenger waiting for it. He's to sell everything bequeathed to me at the best price he can. You have done your best, Halliday, and I suppose I ought to be more grateful than I am, but you see I'm rather fond than otherwise of a big risk. We'll ride over with Mr. Savine and call upon my partner to-day."
It was late in the afternoon when the two arrived at the ranch which Savine had rented. It was the nearest dwelling to the camp that could be rendered comfortable, but lay some distance from it, over a very bad trail. Helen was not cordial towards Geoffrey, who left her to entertain Halliday, and slipped away to the room looking down the valley, where his partner sat with a fur robe wrapped about his bent shoulders. Savine's face had grown very hollow and his eyes were curiously dim.
"It was good of you to come, Geoffrey," he said; "How are you getting on in the cañon?"
"Famously, sir. We are certainly going to beat the river," was the prompt answer, and remembering the accession of capital, Geoffrey's cheerfulness was real. "I'm hoping to ask Miss Savine to fire the final shot some time before the snows melt."
Savine looked at him with a trace of his old keenness, and appeared satisfied that the speaker believed in his own prediction. Then he smiled as he answered:
"You do me good, Geoffrey. Good news is better than gallons of medicine, and when you make such a promise I feel I can trust you. I'm grateful, but it's mighty trying to lie here helpless while another man plays out my last and boldest game for me. Lord! what wouldn't I give for just three months of my old vigor! Still, I'll never be fit again, and as I must lean on somebody, I'm glad it should be you."
"Lean on me! You have given me the chance of my life, sir. You don't look quite comfortable there. Let me settle that rug for you," said Geoffrey, and as with clumsy gentleness he rearranged the sick man's wrappings, Helen came unobserved into the room. She read the pity beneath the smile on the younger man's bronze face and noticed how willingly his hard fingers did their unaccustomed work. Her heart grew soft towards Geoffrey as she heard her father's sigh of content. The sight touched, though, for a reason she was ashamed of, it also troubled her. Unwilling to disturb them, she merely smiled when Thurston saw her, and found herself a seat in a corner.