"Sure!" cried her hearers. "You betcher-boots on that!"
"And who may be your dad, lady?" inquired one. "Some crackerjack swell capitalist, I reckon."
At this, a gaunt, elderly man, who had kept in the background, leaning against a tree, and taking no part in the proceedings, shifted his position, uneasily.
"Well," said the young lady, with a conscious laugh, and the condescension of one who might boast descent from Santa Claus, "I suppose every one in these parts is familiar with the name of Matthew Durant."
"Matthew Durant!" The owner of the name did not claim it, and Scarlett and Barney, who, of the onlookers, alone could have identified him, recognizing the tragedy that was being enacted before them, also were silent. Meanwhile the prospectors, after scratching perplexed heads and ransacking memories in vain, denied all knowledge of the man.
"Maybe he warks his proposeetion as a company, leddy," suggested Sandy.
"Oh, dear, no!" Miss Durant flouted the notion. "My father is It!"
The man leaning against the Douglas spruce, his ragged cap drawn down over his eyes, groaned slightly, and turning away, looked toward the distant mountains, while overhead a bird trilled blithely.
"Let me see if I can describe him," his daughter was saying, in her sweet, assured young voice. "He is tall, erect——"
Durant's bowed shoulders bowed themselves still lower.