Daniel Spencer—Crazy Dan (for whom old Zeke named the claim he had given away, because on the very ground there Dan had made his home) had worked in the creek for placer gold during all the long gone years when others worked the higher ground for silver lodes. An ill-featured, ill-natured old man, having no friends, and seeking none; he had burrowed the cañon’s length for gold as persistently as a gopher does the ground for roots, and—as all had prophesied—with as little showing of the yellow metal. Only a crazy man, they said, would ever have prospected that cañon for gold. It was a cañon for ledges, not placers; for silver, not gold. So the miserly, morose old man followed a phantom to the last; working alone from day-dawn till dusk with rocker and pan, in ground that pitying neighbors vainly tried to lead him away from. Admitting he had never found gold, yet working day after day, Crazy Dan could be seen there for twelve long years. Twelve years of toil that showed no reward for his labor. Then he died. One morning they saw there was no smoke issuing from the cabin chimney; and guessing what they would find, they pushed the door open.
Death had come when he was alone; there had been none to close the staring eyes. He had been near to starvation; there was scarcely any food within the cabin; there were no comforts. Years of toiling for something that was always just beyond; and a lonely death at the end—that was the story.
As she heard, Miss Blaine was stirred with a profound pity. When Cadwallader ceased speaking, her thoughts went straying to those far days, in wonder of the man who made up the sum of the town’s life. Dead, or scattered to the four corners of the earth. Crazy Dan’s death was no more pathetic, perhaps, than that of many another of their number. She rode on in silence, saddened by the recital.
Suddenly Cadwallader’s ringing laugh startled her. But as quickly he checked himself, saying:
“I beg of you, Miss Blaine, don’t misjudge me. I wasn’t thinking then of poor old Dan’s tragic death, or more than tragic life. I happened to remember the sequel to this story; and which, I’m sure, you’ve never heard. Let me tell you——” He hesitated. “Or, no; you’ve heard enough for today, and its humor would jar now on what you’ve just heard. I’ll tell you some other time.”
Nothing more was said about it by either; but she felt confident it related in some way to Hume Sherwood and the Spencer mine.
The latter had kept men continuously at work on his newly acquired property since coming into possession of them; but the faith that was his in the beginning, grew fainter with the waning of Summer. Autumn brought decided doubt. With the coming of Winter came a certainty of their worthlessness, he knew he had been befooled by a sharp trickster, but how far his ignorance had been played upon he did not yet know. Nevertheless, he felt he had well earned the titles the camp had bestowed on him, for the claims, he found, were but relocations that had been abandoned years before as utterly worthless. He had simply thrown his dollars into the deep sea.
If only that had been all!
Evaleen Blaine and her father, contrary to all their earlier plans for a return to San Francisco at the beginning of Autumn, were still in Nevada, and there Winter found them, though the machinery was all placed and the big reservoir and dam completed. But an offer to buy the Monarch property—mines, mill, and all that went with them—had come from a New York syndicate, and the Judge was now detained by their agents. He must stay yet a few days more—then home to “mother and the girls.” Nor would Evaleen leave without him; so for the first time in all his married life he was to be away from home on Christmas. Thus matters stood when the greater half of December had gone.