“Much obleeged,” she said again, still unsmiling, and then she suddenly looked up at him—the deeps of her dark eyes troubled.
“Air ye ever comin' back agin, Jack?” Hale was not accustomed to the familiar form of address common in the mountains, independent of sex or age—and he would have been staggered had not her face been so serious. And then few women had ever called him by his first name, and this time his own name was good to his ears.
“Yes, June,” he said soberly. “Not for some time, maybe—but I'm coming back again, sure.” She smiled then with both lips and eyes—radiantly.
“I'll be lookin' fer ye,” she said simply.
VI
The old man went with him up the creek and, passing the milk house, turned up a brush-bordered little branch in which the engineer saw signs of coal. Up the creek the mountaineer led him some thirty yards above the water level and stopped. An entry had been driven through the rich earth and ten feet within was a shining bed of coal. There was no parting except two inches of mother-of-coal—midway, which would make it but easier to mine. Who had taught that old man to open coal in such a way—to make such a facing? It looked as though the old fellow were in some scheme with another to get him interested. As he drew closer, he saw radiations of some twelve inches, all over the face of the coal, star-shaped, and he almost gasped. It was not only cannel coal—it was “bird's-eye” cannel. Heavens, what a find! Instantly he was the cautious man of business, alert, cold, uncommunicative.
“That looks like a pretty good—” he drawled the last two words—“vein of coal. I'd like to take a sample over to the Gap and analyze it.” His hammer, which he always carried—was in his saddle pockets, but he did not have to go down to his horse. There were pieces on the ground that would suit his purpose, left there, no doubt, by his predecessor.
“Now I reckon you know that I know why you came over hyeh.”
Hale started to answer, but he saw it was no use.