"He's got brains," commented Sandy, rubbing Grit's ears. The collie had picked up since Sandy's return, sensing some connection with his mistress closer than that of Mormon and Sam. He would feed only from Sandy's hand and attached himself to the latter almost as permanently as his shadow. "So has Jim Plimsoll. I ain't hankerin' fo' another man to clean him up befo' I get my own chance. But that bunch sure mean business."
The incident was forgotten as the round-up days grew near, with frosty mornings when the mountains looked as flat as if they had been profiled from cardboard and stuck up along the horizon—until the lifting sun modeled them with shadows—with sweltering noons tapering slowly off to cool nights while horses raced after the flying cattle, driving and cutting out, and so to the corral brandings, where the three partners found their increase better than they had anticipated.
Molly was not to come home at Christmas after all. She formed a friendship, the first close one she had made, and Barbara Redding advised that the invitation extended by this new acquaintance to spend the holidays be accepted. There had been plans of a Christmas tree and a celebration, but the gifts were boxed and sent off. Others arrived from the East in exchange, a collar for Grit, a cigarette case for Sandy, a necktie for Mormon and a three-decked harmonica for Sam. There was a picture too, not so much of a girl but a young woman, a somewhat wistful look in her eyes, but a firm-lipped, resolute-chinned young woman for all that, who smiled out at them frankly and confidently. It was signed
A Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year
from the Mascotte of the * * *
Molly.
"I dunno about the merry Christmas," said Mormon. "We're prosperous enough, short of bein' profiteers. Molly's gettin' to be a good-looker, ain't she? Goin' to git it framed, Sandy?"
Snows fell, the temperature ranged down far below zero at times, winter gave reluctant place to spring until the last moment when it turned and fled and, far into the desert, myriads of flower-blooms sprang up overnight while everywhere the cactus gleamed in silken blooms in yellow and crimson.
One April night the Bailey flivver came charging up to Three Star, smothering itself in a cloud of dust that had not settled before there sprang out of it Miranda Bailey and the lanky Ed, temporarily charged with a tremendous activity. The cause of young Ed's galvanism was so strong that he actually won from his aunt as bearer of the news.
"Gold!" he cried. "They've struck pay dirt at Dynamite! Chunks of sylvanite that sweat gold in the fire. Assay thirty thousand dollars a ton. Whole streaks of it. Vein's twelve foot wide. The whole town's stampedin' by way of White Cliff Cañon. I'm goin'. Got a pick an' shovel in the car. Aunt Mirandy, she was bound we'd come this way. Mebbe we can pack you all in. But you got to hurry or they'll swarm over Dynamite like flies on a chunk o' liver!"
"It's true," backed Miss Bailey. "Folks over to Hereford have gone crazy. I caught a word or two that Plimsoll's to the bottom of the rush. Ed heard he got hold of some samples them easterners took an' had 'em sent away an' assayed. They turned out to be the big stuff. 'Course you can't depend on gossip, when folks are talkin' mines but, if it's so, Plimsoll's burned the wind to git first pick. An' he'll grab those claims of Molly's first thing. That's one reason I made Ed come this way. Thought you might like to come erlong, on'y he took the words out of my mouth."