"That accounts fer it," confirmed Bill Travers. "Sandy and Waymart they come up from Cody along in February and when they clumb int’ th’ stage goin’ back, Sandy’s hand was tied up. Next thing I knowed when they come up with me t’ other day, that finger was off clean to the hand, but Sandy hain’t never spoken of it."
Ross, leaving Bill to talk the matter over with his companions, went on rapidly now down the cañon, his eyes narrowed and his chin protruding doggedly. One disagreeable scene was ended, and he was, perhaps, facing another.
"I ought to be sorry that Sandy lost a finger but–hanged if I am!" he burst out loud. He was anxious to have Leslie know the result of his random shot.
Rounding a shoulder of Gale’s Ridge, he came in sight of Steele’s shack. Steele sat in the doorway. Beside him, leaning against the logs of the shack’s side, was a man in shirt-sleeves and cap, beneath which a rim of woolly gray hair projected.
Facing Steele were two well dressed men, one in a tall silk hat, which appeared incongruous against its background of log shack and pine tree. Ross, with narrowed eyes and compressed lips, plodded on.
"I’ve done my best," he muttered defensively. "It’s all a fellow can do; but, when that best is failure, why, it’s not much consolation."
Then he raised his head, squared his shoulders, and doggedly faced the four in front of Steele’s cabin.
Ross Grant, Senior, had not come West to look after his claims, but after his son, with whom he felt he had but just begun an acquaintance. He had no difficulty in getting Dr. Grant to accompany him, reënforced as he was by an anxious Aunt Anne. It was true that both Ross and Steele had written that all communications with the former would be shut off for months. But, when the hot days of June came and brought no letter from the boy, as Aunt Anne said, "something must be done."
That something was represented in the persons of the Grant brothers in Miners’ Camp.
After the first greetings, tinged with amazement on the part of the four, Ross backed up against a spruce, and, facing the others, proceeded to answer the questions with which they bombarded him.