trouble
getting the agreement witnessed. However," he produced a document which
mother snatched, "it's all there in black and white, and there's the old
fool's signature--holds good in any court of law--proves that I've
bought and paid for the whole _atajo_. You needn't claim I haven't a
clear title--so you needn't stare at me as if I'd forged the signature.
It's straight goods, I tell you."

Mother reeled backward, while she grabbed Pete's shoulders so that the
agreement fluttered to Brooke's feet. She steadied herself, then with a
husky croak, "You made Bolt sign _that_--blind, dying, so he dunno
what's on the paper."

"Can you prove that?" asked Brooke indulgently, as though he spoke to
children. "If you say things like that, it's criminal libel, and you're
both liable to the Skookum House. However," he shrugged his shoulders,
and put the agreement away, "I don't want to be hard on you, Pete."

"Mister Mathson," mother hissed at him.

Pete, with a whispered word to mother, rose from his bench, and without
appearing to see Mr. Brooke, walked past him across the sunlit yard, and
on slowly up the great lifting curve of the road to Hundred Mile House.

The sun was setting behind him when Pete rested at last upon the
snowclad summit, and dusk lay in lakes of shadow far below him. At the
Hundred he found the lamps alight, and, as usual, Billy offered him a
drink. "I ain't drinking," said Pete huskily, as he lurched past the bar
into the dining-hall, and on to the little room on the right where
Captain Taylor lay.

"Bolt!" he whispered.

"That you, Pete? Sit down," said the boss cheerily. "How's the claim,
Pete? Getting coarse gold, eh?"

"Gold? Say, Bolt, what's the matter, old fellow?"

"Matter? Why, nothing, Pete," the blind eyes shone keenly; "of course
I'm not nearly to bedrock yet, and as to what I owe you've jolly well
got to wait. How's old Calamity? I got Lost Creek Jim to work at last."

Was the boss dreaming of old times on Lightning Creek?

"Watty's in with the mail," said Bolt.

Watty had been dead these thirty years.

Then Pete sat down on the bedside, and the two miners prattled about the
new flume, and the price of flour in a camp now overgrown with jungle.

A word to Billy would have been enough to get the _aparejos_ to a place
of safety, pending the settlement of Pete's just claim as partner. But
the cargador knew well that death had come to take the one man he loved.
This was no time for