“I tried to reason with him, to argue with him, offered him his own terms if he’d let me develop it; but he wouldn’t listen. If I wouldn’t accept he’d throw me over entirely, notwithstanding the fact that I’d made the find possible, and sell to some one else—sell something he didn’t have; for at last it all came out, why he’d gone crazy and wouldn’t wait. He’d lied to me previously. Before he’d left Tonopah he’d talked, told of his find to a half-dozen of his friends, and left them specimens of the same ore he’d brought me. He’d told them everything, in fact, except the location. It developed that he had retained judgment enough to keep back even a hint of that; and they were waiting for him there,—he knew it and I knew it,—waiting his return, waiting to learn the 235 location, and to steal his claim before he could stake it himself.”
“And still, feeling certain of that in your own mind, you paid him his price!”
“Every dollar of it—before I took the midnight train West. I raised it after business hours, in a dozen different ways; but I got it. I pooled for security everything I had in the world—except Old Reliable; I kept that free for a purpose,—my house, my library, my stock in the traction company, some real estate I own. I had to give good measure because I had to have the money right then. And I got it. It was a pull but I got it.”
The girl’s head was back on her folded arms once more, the long lashes all but covering her eyes.
“Supposing Evans had been lying to you after all,” she suggested, “in other things besides the one you mentioned.”
Over Roberts’ face flashed a momentary smile.
“I told you we were locked in that room together for an hour. He wasn’t lying to me after that time had passed, rest assured. Besides, I wasn’t entirely helpless or surprised. I’d been out in that country myself and Evans wasn’t the only man I had reporting. I’d been waiting 236 for a chance of this kind from the day the first prospect developed at Goldfield. I knew it would come sometime—if I waited my chance.”
“So you gambled—with every cent you had in the world.”
“Yes. All life is a gamble. If I had lost I was only thirty-five and the earth is big. Besides, to all the world I was still ‘old man’ Roberts, not ‘Darley.’ There was yet plenty of time—if I lost.”
“You went West that same evening, you say.” The long lashes were all but touching now. “What then?”