"DARTER DON'T LOOK AS IF IT WAS SPELLED RIGHT," CRITICIZED BULLY.
"Oh, I'll make that all right!" The Dandy put the letter in his breast and walked away.
"Ef yer don't may yer sizzle!" Nick called after him. Turning to Durant: "Pard, I'm grateful," he declared, with feeling. "Pard, the best wish I kin give ye is, may ye never need no one ter do the same by you."
"Thanks, Nick. That's all right." Durant looked about him, and seeing that Raish was out of earshot and Blenksoe not in sight, went closer to the Bully and his followers. "Friends, there's something I want to say to you," he began. "It's just this: You've all done me a kindness to my dying day I shan't forget. A fortnight ago, when my girl came into camp expecting to find me living in a diamond-encrusted palace, and I stood there so forlorn she didn't recognize me, a broken-hearted beggar, you who by one word might have pricked the bubble and humiliated me before her and her before the world, by your silence protected her and me. It was the noblest thing——" His voice broke; he wiped his eyes.
"Thet's all right, Lucky! Brace up, old man!" came from one and another of the group.
"Aye, but now I want you all to hear my good news!" cried Durant, detaining them as they were preparing to go back into the dining-tent to resume their interrupted feast. "It has all come true! With so many grafters and claim-jumpers round I daren't be explicit, but I want you to know that my luck has turned for good and all. Oh, this time it's no pocket; it's the big strike of which I've always dreamed. I don't deserve it, some may think, after playing with my girl's credulity, yet for her sake I thank God with all my heart that I've won out! Till it's staked and recorded I know you'll all keep my secret—but, boys, every one of you is in it, the Rainbow Mine!"
The same wonderful delicacy that had marked their treatment of Evelyn did not fail her father. The Bully and his gang listened to this speech in respectful silence, at its conclusion crying, "Great! Good for you, old man! You done grand! Allus knew you'd git thar fer keeps! Sure! Betcherlife! That's what!" with every evidence of conviction and spontaneous joy. But as he walked off, Durant laughed. He did not need to look back to know that fingers were being pointed after him, winks interchanged and foreheads tapped significantly, with comment that found food for mirth, even while it deplored: "Off his nut fer fair. Balmy on the crumpet. Bats in his belfry. Qualifying for Queer Street. Plumb crazy. Poor old Lucky!"
Well, let them think so, bless them, since another day would set them right and prove him all he claimed to be. And then nothing gold could procure would be too good for them, nothing—this rough crew, more beast than man, that had yet behaved like more than man to his deceived, defenceless girl.
That hour—its memory was seared upon his very soul—the hour of Evelyn's arrival in camp that had witnessed the deepest degradation, followed immediately by the crowning justification and triumph of his career. He visualized it now, as he walked: In the Klondike Delmonico's, in her rôle of Lady Bountiful, Evelyn was dispensing hospitality right and left. He alone, her father, dared not enter in. Crushed, crazed, he walked back to the spot where he had left young Pierce. Him he found still brooding beneath the huge pine, dazed, amid the ruin of his own air castles. Then for one bad moment Durant went really mad. Picking up the gun he had dropped when an irresistible force drew him to go watch the incoming stage, he turned its deadly charge against his fevered brain.
With a cry, Walter sprang forward, but not before old Blenksoe, who had been watching his associate's actions curiously, seized him, capturing the gun. "No yer don't, blast yer!"