"Dead sure, young man. You let me run this thing. Now, I won't take 'no.' You just get a carriage, and get this all down to my hotel. You can finish it there. I've got to go down to my bank, and you be there to meet me. You'll have a good dinner; you bet you will. God! what a man Valois was. Dead and gone, poor fellow!
"Now, I'm off! don't you linger now."
He strides to his carriage, followed by a crowd of "valets de place." All know Joe Woods, the big-souled mining magnate. He always leaves a golden trail.
Armand imagines the fairy of good luck has set him dreaming. No; it is all true.
He packs up his kit, and sends for a coupe. Giving orders as to the picture, he repairs to the home of the Dauvrays for his toilet. He tells PŠre Fran‡ois of his good fortune.
"Joe Woods, did you say," murmurs the priest. "He was a friend of Valois. He is rich. Tell him I remember him. He knows who I am. I would like to see him."
There is a strange light in Fran‡ois Ribaut's eye. Here is a friend; perhaps, an ally. He must think, must think.
The old priest taps his snuff-box uneasily.
In a "cabinet particulier" of the Grand Hotel restaurant, Woods pours out to the young man, stories of days of toil and danger; lynching scenes, gambling rows, "shooting scrapes," and all kaleidoscopic scenes of the "flush days of the Sacramento Valley."
Armand learns his cousin's life in California. He imparts to the Colonel, now joyous over his "becassine aux truffes" and Chambertin, the meagre details he has of the death of the man who fell in the intoxicating hour of victory on fierce Hood's fiercest field.