mine-owner.

"Yes, you'd better go and see him," Dick said concisely. "And when you
go, take all of your dunnage you can carry, then come back and get the
rest. I shall not want you on the claim an hour longer than necessary
for you to get your stuff away. You're too good a man to have around
here."

The fellow gave a shrug of his shoulders, an evil grin, and
turned back up the road to vanish in what had evidently been the
superintendent's cabin, and noisily began to whistle as he gathered
his stuff together. The partners halted before the door, and Dick
looked inside.

"I suppose you have the keys for everything, haven't you?" he called.

The man impudently tossed a bundle at him without a word. Apparently
his belongings were but few, which led the newcomers to believe that
he had taken his meals at the Rattler, and perhaps slept there on many
nights. They watched him as he rolled his blankets, and prepared to
start down the trail.

"The rest of that plunder in there, the pots and the lamp, belong to
the mine," he said. And then, without other words, turned away.

"That may be the last of him, and maybe it won't!" growled Bill, as he
began throwing the hitches off the tired burros that stood panting
outside the door. "Anyway, it's the fag end of him to-night."

They were amazed at the lavish expenditure of money that had been made
in the superintendent's quarters. There were a porcelain bathtub
brought up into the heart of the wilderness, a mahogany desk whose
edges had been burned by careless smokers, and a safe whose door swung
open, exposing a litter of papers, mine drawings, and plans. The four
rooms evidently included office and living quarters, and they
betokened a reckless financial outlay for the purpose.

"Poor Dad!" said Dick, looking around him. "No wonder the Cross lost
money if this is a sample of the way the management spent it."

He stepped outside to where the canyon was beginning to sink into the
dusk. The early moon, still behind the silhouette of the eastern
fringe of peaks and forests, lighted up the yellow cross mark high
above, and for some reason, in the stillness of the evening, he
accepted it as a sign of promise.

CHAPTER IV

THE BLACK DEATH

It took seven days of exploration to reveal the condition of the Cross
of Gold, and each night the task appeared more hopeless. The steel
pipe line, leading down for three miles of sinuous, black length, from
a reservoir high up in