"Then it isn't Juana Briones that's ill. Perhaps it's her husband."
"Has she got a husband?" asked the miner, disappointedly. "No, I reckon 'twant him. 'Twas a woman name o' Stanley. I remember now--Goin' to have a bebby."
CHAPTER XXIII
THE NEW ARRIVAL
"Take my horse," said Brannan, hurriedly. "I'll stay here with Benito." He bundled the excited Stanley and Nathan Spear out of the room, where Benito still slept under the spell of the doctor's opiate. "You, too," he told the miner, "you've had too much red liquor to play the nurse." He closed the door after them.
The young contractor spoke first. "By the eternal, I never thought of that! I'm glad she had a woman with her."
He spurred his horse toward Telegraph, Hill, as it had begun to be known, since signals were flashed from its crest, announcing the arrival of vessels. Down its farther slope was the little rancho of Dona Briones, where Inez in her extremity had sought the good friend of her childhood.
Adrian's thought leaped forward into coming years. Inez and he together, always together as the years passed. And between them a son--intuitively he felt that it would be a son--a successor, taking up their burdens as they laid them down; bearing their name, their ideals, purposes along, down the pageant of time.
He paid little heed as they passed through a huddle of huts, tents and lean-tos on the southern ascent. Though the hour was late, many windows were light and sounds of revelry came dimly, as though muffled, from curtain-hid interiors. There was something furtive and ill-omened about this neighborhood which one sensed rather than perceived. Spear rode close and touched Adrian's arm.