“I’ll take you from the railway to the Hard Luck mine. Will you go?” she demanded with a touch of defiance.
“Go!” he cried, discretion struggling with enthusiasm. “Of course I’ll go. Nothing would give me greater pleasure. But, then, on the other hand—you see—well—to speak quite frankly, for a young lady to—to, as one might say, journey across the plains——”
“Yes, I know, I know. You are talking now, not to my brother, as you remarked a while ago, but to my brother’s sister. All my life I have had not only to take care of myself, but of my father as well. This project is a matter of vital importance to me, and I cannot allow it to fail merely because the rules of society would frown on what I intend to do. I shall take with me my own tent, and an old man who was in my father’s employ long before I was born. This is a cold business deal, and no other consideration is going to enter into it. So let us brush aside every other consideration and come down to plain facts. You offered me a thousand dollars, and I refused it. If you will now give me the necessary money, which may be anything from two hundred dollars upwards, depending on what you want to take with you, I shall go at once to Pickaxe Gulch, which is the nearest railway station to the Hard Luck mine, and will collect what transport we need. There I shall await your coming. Do you intend to take any servants with you?”
“I shall be accompanied by Sam Jackson, a negro man, who is the best cook in this town.”
“Very well, you will need a horse for him, and one for yourself; I shall need two horses; that’s four. Then if you will give me an idea of the number of tents and boxes you require, I shall secure mules enough to carry them. We shall want two or three men to look after the mules, and you must give me a week at least to get this cavalcade together. Sometimes there are neither animals nor men at Pickaxe Gulch, but I intend to telegraph at once and secure whatever transport is available.”
John Steele smiled his appreciation of the capability displayed by the fearless young woman, opened his drawer, and took out a cheque-book.
“Shall we say five hundred dollars?” he asked, looking across the desk at her. “You must leave some money with your father, you know.”
“Five hundred will be ample,” she replied decidedly, and he wrote a cheque for that amount.
Later on in his life Steele remembered that demand for money with admiration. It was just one of those little points where a less subtle person than Miss Fuller would have made a mistake, deluded by success in getting him to promise to make the trip. But the young woman was evidently shrewd enough to know that after she left he would wonder, she having pleaded poverty, where the money came from to pay for so long a railway journey and at the same time provide for an ailing father at home. He always regarded that request for expenses as the climax of a well-thought-out plan.