Pacing the narrow confines of his office and chewing savagely on an unlighted cigar, he muttered to himself, over and over again, his voice a husky and hopeless whisper:
“We’re at the end of our rope; McGowan has taken the one step that will put the kibosh on us. Had we better duck out of here between two days and get across the Mexican border, or stay and try and brazen the matter out?”
He stopped before a window. Leaning against the wall, he looked out dejectedly.
The “plant” of the Three-ply lay below him, in the bottom of the scarred and blistered valley.
Off to the right was the bunk-house and chuck-shanty. Several rods below the bunk-house was the ten-stamp mill, throbbing with the roar of the great stamps pounding out the gold. To the left of the mill were rows of big wooden tanks, where the mill “tailings” were treated with cyanid of potassium; and to the left of the tanks again, was the little adobe laboratory where the man—Jacobs by name—who had charge of the cyaniding, made his tests and did the assaying, refined mill, and cyanid bullion, and ran it into molds.
Teamsters were hauling ore to the mill, miners were coming and going between the shaft-house and the blacksmith-shop, Mexicans were hovering over the tops of the cyanid-tanks, dumping into them wheelbarrow-loads of “tailings,” and everywhere was a scene of the utmost activity.
Bernritter’s moody eyes took no account of all the bustle and energy which spelled success for the Three-ply plant and prosperity for its owner, Patrick McGowan. Bernritter’s unofficial affairs were in a tangle, and his everlasting ruin seemed imminent.
When men betray an employer’s trust and do evil and dishonest things, they must expect to have an uneasy conscience. But it was more than an uneasy conscience that troubled Bernritter: His fears told him that he was face to face with exposure and punishment, unless he made some move for his own safety.
As he stared absently through the window, a buxom girl of twenty strolled into his range of vision. Her sleeves were rolled up, she wore an apron, and her course was taking her from the laboratory by the tanks toward the chuck-shanty.
Her name was Frieda Schlagel. As might be suspected by the name, and further guessed from her appearance, she was German. Frieda and her mother did the cooking for the camp.