'If I lost everything I had—and I could not lose everything since I would go on loving you—would that make any difference, Helen?'
She hesitated. 'You know,' she said quietly at last.
So, when the pallid sky gave way to the rosy tints of the new day, they knew everything, being richly wise in the wisdom of youth. Even it was granted them to see the red earth about them and to know that Alan's surmise had led them aright. Just yonder in a little hollow to which the shadows clung longest, were the marks left by Longstreet's pick; there was a tiny pit in which he had toiled exposing a vein of rock from which he had chipped his samples; near the spot his location stake and notice. Promptly they removed their own stakes, taking claims on both sides of his.
'We were right!' called Alan triumphantly. 'But how about Sanchia? He told her and——-'
'Look!' Helen caught his arm and pointed.
Upon a neighbouring hill, by air-line not over half a mile from their own, but almost twice that distance by the trail one must follow down and up the rugged slopes, were two figures. Clearly limned against the sky, they were like black outlines against a pink curtain.
'That is Sanchia!' Helen was positive. 'There is a man with her.
It—— Do you think——'
He did not know why she should think what he knew she did think; what he himself was thinking. It was altogether too far to distinguish one man from another. It might even be Longstreet himself. But he knew that she feared it was Jim Courtot, to whom naturally Sanchia would turn at a moment like this; and never from the first did he doubt that it was Courtot.
'It's some one of Sanchia's crowd,' he said with high assumption of carelessness. 'But here is what I can't understand! Your father told Sanchia; she has raced off and staked; and as sure as fate, they are on the wrong hill! Sanchia wouldn't make a blunder like that!'
Helen was frowning meditatively. She understood what Howard had in mind, and she, too, was perplexed.