"I'm Ruth Duperow," she told him. "My uncle is a missionary here."
At once he remembered Moira's description of the colorful cousin who was keeping her father company. The contrast in type was remarkable.
"Yes," she went on, "I knew the sergeant quite well and admired—both my uncle and I admired his courage and uprightness."
"You said his name was——"
The girl's frankness did not desert her. "His real name was Russell Seymour but we knew him first as Bart Caswell. You see, he has been here for a month, studying the camp without anyone suspecting that he was not the mining expert he pretended he was. Not until the stage robbery did he disclose who he was and put on his uniform."
Seymour turned to hide a smile; the plan which the girl outlined as Bart Caswell's sounded so exactly like his own. When he turned back to her, his hand was stroking meditatively a clean shaven chin.
"Is there a coroner in Gold?" he asked.
"When a man was killed in a shaft cave-in on Sweet Marie Creek last week, a deputy acted before uncle read the service," was the girl's information, delivered with a frown. The reason for the contraction of brow appeared when she added "That deputy sheriff and coroner is a chump named Sam Hardley, and he didn't like Bart—I mean Mr. Seymour."
The real Seymour made mental note of this fragment without seeming to be impressed or more than casually interested.
"At that, Hardley will have to be notified, I suppose," Miss Duperow went on. "It's the law, isn't it?"