never has paid. It never will pay. I
offered to buy it once, but I wouldn't give a dollar for it now,
beyond what the timber above ground is worth. It owns a full section
of timberland, and that's about all."

He reached for a pen and wrote a note to the watchman, telling him
that the bearer, Richard Townsend, had come to look over the property
and that his orders must be accepted, and signed it with his
hard-driven scrawl. He handed it up to Dick without rising from his
seat, and said: "That'll fix you up, I think."

As if by an afterthought, he asked: "Have you any idea of the
condition of the mine?"

"No," Dick answered, as he folded the letter and put it into his
pocket, together with the one from his late father's partner.

"Well, then, I can tell you, it's bad," said Presby, fixing him with
his cool, hard stare. "The Cross is spotted. Once in a while they had
pay chutes. They never had a true ledge. There isn't one there, as far
as anybody that ever worked it knows. They wasted five hundred
thousand dollars trying to find it, and drove ten thousand feet of
drifts and tunnels. They went down more than six hundred feet. She's
under water, no one knows how deep. It might take twenty thousand to
un-water the sinking shaft again, and at the bottom you'd find
nothing. Take my advice. Let it alone. Good-day."

Dick walked out, scarcely knowing whether to feel grateful for the
churlish advice or to resume his wonted attitude of self-reliance and
hold himself unprejudiced by Presby's condemnation of the Croix d'Or.
He wondered if Bully Presby suspected him of having been friendly with
the mob of drunken ruffians at the road house, but he had been given
no chance to explain.

At the bottom of the gulch he found Bill sprawled at length on his
elbows almost under the forefeet of one of the burros which was nosing
him over in a friendly caress. He called out as he approached, and the
big prospector sat up, deftly snapped the cigarette he had been
smoking into the creek with his thumb and forefinger, and got to his
feet.

"Do we get permission to go on the claim?" he grinned, as Townsend
reached him.

"Yes, I've got an order to the watchman. The old man doesn't seem to
think much of it. Says it's spotted. Had rich pay chutes, but they
pinched. No regular formation. Always been a loser. Thinks we'd be
foolish to do anything with it."

"Good of him, wasn't it?"

Dick looked quickly at the hard, lined face of his com