The ranger struck a match and examined the trinket. “It’s the very missing locket. See! Here’s the other one. Compare them together.” He touched the spring and it opened, but the match was burned out and he had to light another. “Here’s the mine map that has been lost all these years. How did you get this? Have you always had it? And how long have you known that you were Frances Mackenzie?”
His questions tumbled out one upon another in his excitement.
She laughed, answering him categorically. “I don’t know, for sure. Yes, at least a great many years. Less than a week.”
“But—I don’t understand—”
“And won’t until you give me a chance to do some of the talking,” she interrupted dryly.
“That’s right. I reckon I am getting off left foot first. It’s your powwow now,” he conceded.
“So long as I can remember exactly I have always lived with the man Hardman and his wife. But before that I can vaguely recall something different. It has always seemed like a kind of fairyland, for I was a very little tot then. But one of the things I seem to remember was a sweet, kind-eyed mother and a big, laughing father. Then, too, there were horses and lots of cows. That is about all, except that the chain around my neck seemed to have some connection with my early life. That’s why I always kept it very carefully, and, after one of the lockets broke, I still kept it and the funny-looking paper inside of it.”
“I don’t understand why Hardman didn’t take the paper,” he interrupted.
“I suppose he did, and when he discovered that it held only half the secret of the mine he probably put it back in the locket. I see you have the other part.”
“It was lost at the place where the robbers waited to hold up the T. P. Limited. Probably you lost it first and one of the robbers found it.”