For a moment Millicent's face grew hard, and her eyes defiant. She smiled sadly as she answered: "It is his due, and can make no difference now. Tell her what seems best."
Meanwhile, Geoffrey was busy in the cañon camp. With Black and Mattawa Tom beside him, he stood holding as symbol, both of equality and authority, a bright ax in his hand, while driller, laborer, and machine-tender, wondering greatly, were passed in review before him. Black had been boarded with a trust rancher some distance from the camp. At last a certain rock driller passed in turn, and Tom from Mattawa explained: "He's a friend of Walla Jake, and as I told you, the last man we put on."
"That's the blame reptile who backed up Shackleby's story at the Blue Bird mine," cried Black, excitedly. "If there's anyone up to mischief, you can bet all you've got he's the man."
"Stop there, you!" Geoffrey's voice was sharp and stern. "Cut him down if he feels for a revolver or tries to make a break of it, section foreman. Come here, close in behind him, you two."
After a swift glance over his shoulder the man who was summoned advanced, scowling darkly. He sullenly obeyed Geoffrey's second command, "Stand there—now a few steps aside," leaving his footprints clearly outlined in a patch of otherwise untrodden snow.
"Good!" observed Geoffrey. "Lay your template [Transcriber's note: corrected from "templet">[ on those marks, Tom." After the foreman had produced a paper pattern which fitted them, Thurston added:
"We're going to make a prisoner of you, and jail you ourselves, until we can get a formal warrant. What for? Well, you're going to be tried for conspiracy among the other things. You see that pattern? It fits the foot of a man who went out one night with a spy Shackleby sent over to see how and when you would play the devil with our work in the cañon. It even shows the stump of the filed-off creeper-spike on your right boot. There's no use protesting—a friend of yours here will help us to trace your career back to the finding of the Blue Bird mine. Take him along and lock him into the galvanized store shed."
The prisoner was taken away, and Geoffrey turned to his foreman.
"He was in the drilling gang, Tom?"
"Juss so! Working under the wall bed of the cañon."