ittle if they heard your old
record."

"And who made it for me?" she demanded. "You! You've been a curse to every
one connected with you. In that other room is a man who might be strong
and well to-day but for you. And there is that girl buried over there by
the picture rocks of Arrow Lake. Think of my mother, dragged to death
through the slums of 'Frisco! And me--"

"And you with a gold mine, or the price of one," he concluded--"plenty of
money and plenty of friends. That is about the facts of your
case--friends, from millionaires down to that digger I saw you with the
other night."

"Don't you dare say a word against him!" she exclaimed, threateningly.

"Oh, that's the way the land lies, is it?" he asked, with an ugly leer at
her. "And that is why you were playing 'meet me by moonlight alone,' that
night when I saw you together at the spring. Well, I think your money
might help you to some one besides a married man."

"A married man?" she gasped. "Dan!"

"Dan, it is," he answered, insolently. "But you needn't faint away on that
account. I have other use for you--I want some money."

"You are telling that lie about him because you think it will trouble me,"
she said, regarding his painted face closely and giving no heed to his
demand. "You know it is not true."

"About the marriage? I'll swear--"

"I would not believe your oath for anything."

"Oh, you wouldn't? Well, now, what if I prove to you, right in this camp,
that I know his wife?"

"His wife?" She sat down on the side of the couch, and all the cabin
seemed whirling around her.

"Well--a girl he married. You may call her what you please. She had been
called a good many things before he picked her up. Humph! Now that he has
struck it rich, some one ought to let her know. She'd make the dollars
fly."

"It is not true! It is not _true_!" she murmured to herself, as if by the
words she could drive away the possibility of it.

He appeared to enjoy the sensation he had created.

"It is true," he answered--"every word of it, and he has been keeping
quiet about it, has he? Well, see here. You don't believe me--do you? Now,
while I was waiting there at the door, a man came in to put your paralyzed
partner to bed. The man was Jake Emmons--used to hang out at Spokane. He
knew Lottie Snyder before this Overton did--and after Overton married her,
too, I guess. You ask him anything you want to know of it. He can tell
you--if he will."

She did not answer.