Strange to say, at this very moment Joyce Mills sat in the small cabin allotted to her father, dreaming dreams and thinking of the revelation that had come to her from Johnny’s lips on that very afternoon.
“One of them is a thief,” she repeated to herself. “It does not seem possible!” And indeed it did not. Never in all her life had she come upon young men so frank, so kind and so generous, so whole-heartedly serious about their work, and yet so joyous, as the three who at that moment were sending out from the other cabin, to the accompaniment of Jim’s banjo, the hilarious notes of an old backwoods song.
“It can’t be, yet it must be,” she told herself.
Then her brow clouded. If they should find gold; if those others came to file claims, as they undoubtedly would do, there would be trouble.
“A fight. A terrible fight,” she said aloud.
And yet, how were those others to know when a strike was made? If necessity required, would she tell them? To this question she could form no answer.
“Moccasin Telegraph,” she murmured. “Those were the very words Johnny used. I wonder what he meant?”
Having thought this thing through as far as her mind would carry her, she allowed mental pictures of her father’s three young partners to drift before her mind’s eye. Jim, tall and slim, with a Kentucky mountaineer’s drooping shoulders and drawling voice; Clyde, big and strong, a little loud, full of fun and ready for the best or the worst of any adventure; and Lloyd, a Canadian, quiet, soft-spoken, apparently very well educated. These were the three.
“And one is—
“No, I won’t say it!” she told herself stoutly. “It may not be true. And if it’s not, I must prove it.”