From out of the junipers a rifle cracked. She ran down the path blindly, in an agony of fright. Before she had taken three steps the rifle sounded again. A scream filled the dusk, a scream of fear and pain and protest.
The lurching figure of a man moved out of the gloom toward the running girl. It stumbled and went down.
With a sob of woe Vicky flung herself down upon the prostrate body. “Hugh!” she cried, and the word carried all her love, fears, dreads, and terrors.
No sound came from the still form her arms embraced.
CHAPTER XLII
HUGH RIDES TO AN APPOINTMENT
Bald Knob hummed with activities. The Ground Hog was taking out quantities of rich ore. On Vicky’s claim the leasers had struck a vein which might or might not develop into a paying proposition. A dozen other shafts were going down and from the side of the hill a tunnel was progressing at a right angle toward the Ground Hog drift.
The fame of the new discovery had spread over the state and from all directions prospectors were stampeding to the diggings. A steady stream of wagons wound up and down the hill. They brought to the camp flour, bacon, whisky, coal oil, dynamite, canned goods, clothing, lumber, chickens, honey, hay, and the thousand other staples needed by the young camp. Stores at Piodie set up branch establishments in tents and flimsy shacks. Other merchants came in from Eureka and Virginia. Freight outfits moved bag and baggage to Bald Knob, wagons loaded to the side boards with supplies. Gamblers and women of loose reputation joined the rush, keen to help reap the harvest always ripe in a young live mining camp.
The most important and the busiest man in the new camp was Hugh McClintock. He was a third owner of the Ground Hog and he had claims of his own in addition. He managed the teaming and contracting business of himself and his brother, now with temporary headquarters at Budd & Byers corral. Moreover, he was looked on as unofficial father of the camp. To him came drifters out of work, men who proposed the incorporation of a town in the saddle of the dromedary-backed hill, solicitors for contributions to an emergency hospital, and scores of others who had troubles or difficulties they wanted to unload.
On the afternoon of a sunny day came to him also a barefoot Negro boy with a note. The note read: