“Did you recognize––?”
“I see James. He was dead––as mutton, too––an’ all his gang. Gee! It must ’a’ bin a hell of a scrap.”
The man spat out a stream of tobacco juice and rubbed his hands.
“It sure must,” agreed Minky. And he passed into the store.
It was dark when Scipio urged the old mule up the bank at the fork of the creek. He was very weary, and Jessie was asleep beside him, with her head pillowed upon his shoulder. His arm was about her, supporting her, and he sat rigid, lest the bumping of the rattling vehicle should waken her. The position for him was trying, but he never wavered. Cramped and weary as he was, he strove by every means in his power to leave her undisturbed.
And as he passed the river three ghostly figures ambled down to the bank, and, after drinking their horses, likewise passed over. But while Scipio kept to the trail, they vanished amidst the woods. Their task was over, and they sought the shortest route to their homes.
And so Scipio came to his claim. And such was his state of mind, so was he taken up with the happiness which the presence of his wife beside him gave him, and such was his delight in looking forward to the days to come, that he saw nothing of that which lay about him.
The air to him was sweet with all the perfumes his thankful heart inspired in his thoughts. His road was a path of roses. The reek of oil was beyond his simple ken. Nor did he heed the slush, slush of his mule’s feet, as the old beast floundered through the lake of oil spread out on all sides about him. The gurgling, the sadly bubbling gusher, even, might have been one of the fairy sounds of night, for all thought he gave to it.
No; blind to all things practical as he always was, how was it possible that Scipio, leaving Suffering Creek a poor, struggling prospector, should realize by these outward signs that he had returned to it, possibly, a millionaire?