“Miss Rivers!” he exclaimed, incredulously. “Well, if this isn’t luck! Harris will about drop dead with joy when he sees you. He took worse just after dark last night. He says he is worse, though he can talk yet. I was with him a little while, and how he did worry because you wouldn’t get here before he was done for! Overton has been with him all night; went to bed only an hour ago. I’ll call the folks up for you.”
“No,” said the girl, hastily; “call no one yet. I will go to Joe if you will take me. If he is so bad, that will be best. Let the rest sleep.”
“Can I carry the—the baby?” he asked, doubtfully, and took the child in his arms with a sort of fear lest it should break. He was not the sort of man to be needlessly curious, so he showed no surprise at the rather strange adjunct to her outfit, but carried the little sleeper into the pretty sitting room, where he deposited it on a couch, and the girl arranged it comfortably, that it might at last have undisturbed rest.
A man in an adjoining room heard their voices and came to the door. 349
“You can come out for a while, Kelly,” said Saunders. “This is Miss Rivers. She will want to see him.”
A minute later the man in charge had left ’Tana alone beside Harris.
All the life in him seemed to gather in his eyes as he looked at her.
“You have come! I told him you would—I told Dan,” he whispered, excitedly. “Come close; turn up the light; I want to see you plain. Just the same girl; but happier—a heap happier, ain’t you?”
“A heap happier,” she agreed.
“And I helped you about it some—about the mine, I mean. I like to think of that, to think I made some return for the harm I done you.”