“Mapleson.”
“Mapleson?” repeated the miner, reflectively. “I don’t think I ever heard the name before, leastwise not in the diggings. What mine did he work?”
“He had some shares in the Moreno mines on the east side of the Rocky Mountains.”
“Wall, I wasn’t located in the Moreno mines myself. I was rather up among the mountains, though I’ve been there; but I never met a man by the name of Mapleson; though there’s nothing strange about that, where so many people own shares. I worked for a man named Dale——”
“Dale!” interrupted Everet, with a sudden shock.
“Yes, and a fine man he was—handsome chap, too; altogether too much of a fine gentleman to be roughing it as a miner, I used to think.”
“Where did he come from?” the young man inquired, trying to repress the eagerness that possessed him.
“I couldn’t tell you. I was in Santa Fe one day looking for a job and he was looking for a man, to sort of superintend a claim. We took to each other, struck a bargain on the spot, and I went back to his diggings with him that very night. He couldn’t or wouldn’t wait till the next day, though I’d been glad to, and afterward I found out the reason—he had the trappiest little wife up there that I ever set eyes on—a sweet, white-livered little thing, with eyes as blue as the sky and hair as bright as the gold we dug out of the bowels of the earth.”
The miner was waxing eloquent over the reminiscence.
“’Tisn’t often that a man cares to take such a dainty piece of humanity into such a wild, outlandish place as a miner’s camp, and goodness knows that it’s rare enough for a rough set like us to see a beautiful woman, let alone having her right among us all the time. But there wasn’t a soul that wouldn’t have risked his life to defend her from any evil or danger, for she always had a kind smile and a gentle word for the worst of us.”