all summer and oversee the work, will
you?" she inquired anxiously.

"I should," he said.

For a second or two he drummed on the table top.

"I should do that. It's what I had in mind when I started this thing,"
he said wistfully. "I thought we'd go in this spring and rush things
through the good weather, and come out ahead of the snow. We could
stay a while at the ranch, and break up the winter with a jaunt here or
some place."

"But is there any real necessity for you to stay on the ground?" She
pursued her own line of thought. "I should think an undertaking of
this size would justify hiring an expert to take charge of the actual
mining operations. Won't you have this end of it to look after?"

"Lorimer and Brooks are eminently capable of upholding the dignity and
importance of that sign they've got smeared across the windows
downtown," he observed curtly. "The chief labor of the office they've
set up will be to divide the proceeds. The work will be done and the
money made in the Klappan Range. You sabe that, don't you?"

"I'm not stupid," she pouted.

"I know you're not, little person," he said quietly. "But you've
changed a heap in the last few months. You don't seem to be my pal any
more. You've fallen in love with this butterfly life. You appear to
like me just as much as ever, but if you could you'd sentence me to
this kid-glove existence for the rest of my natural life. Great
Caesar's ghost!" he burst out. "I've laid around like a well-fed
poodle for seven months. And look at me--I'm mush! Ten miles with a
sixty-pound pack would make my tongue hang out. I'm thick-winded, and
twenty pounds over-weight--and you talk calmly about my settling down
to office work!"

His semi-indignation, curiously enough, affected Hazel as being
altogether humorous. She had a smile-compelling vision of that
straight, lean-limbed, powerful body developing a protuberant waistline
and a double chin. That was really funny, so far-fetched did it seem.
And she laughed. Bill froze into rigid silence.

"I'm going to-morrow," he said suddenly. "I think, on the whole, it'll
be just as well if you don't go. Stay here and enjoy yourself. I'll
transfer some more money to your account. I think I'll drop down to
the club."

She followed him out into the hall, and, as he wriggled into his coat,
she had an impulse to throw her arms around his neck and declare, in
all sincerity, that she would go to the Klappan o