the exploited water
course, floored with bowlders set in deep gravel, at times with seamy
dams of flat rock lying under and across the gravel stretches; the bed
rock, ages old, holding in its hidden fingers the rich secrets of
immemorial time.

Here he and his partner had in a few months of strenuous labor taken
from the narrow and unimportant rivulet more wealth than most could save
in a lifetime of patient and thrifty toil. Yes, fortune had been kind.
And it all had been so easy, so simple, so unagitating, so
matter-of-fact! The hillside now looked like any other hillside,
innocent as a woman's eyes, yet covering how much! Banion could not
realize that now, young though he was, he was a rich man.

He climbed down the side of the ravine, the little stones rattling under
his feet, until he stood on the bared floor of the bed rock which had
proved so unbelievably prolific in coarse gold.

There was a sharp bend in the ravine, and here the unpaid toil of the
little waterway had, ages long, carried and left especially deep strata
of gold-shot gravel. As he stood, half musing, Will Banion heard, on the
ravine side around the bend, the tinkle of a falling stone, lazily
rolling from one impediment to another. It might be some deer or other
animal, he thought. He hastened to get view of the cause, whatever it
might be.

And then fate, chance, the goddess of fortune which some men say does
not exist, but which all wilderness-goers know does exist, for one
instant paused, with Will Banion's life and wealth and happiness lightly
a-balance in cold, disdainful fingers.

He turned the corner. Almost level with his own, he looked into the eyes
of a crawling man who--stooped, one hand steadying himself against the
slant of the ravine, the other below, carrying a rifle--was peering
frowningly ahead.

It was an evil face, bearded, aquiline, not unhandsome; but evil in its
plain meaning now. The eyes were narrowed, the full lips drawn close, as
though some tense emotion now approached its climax. The appearance was
that of strain, of nerves stretched in some purpose long sustained.

And why not? When a man would do murder, when that has been his steady
and premeditated purpose for a year, waiting only for opportunity to
serve his purpose, that purpose itself changes his very lineaments,
alters his whole cast of countenance. Other men avoid him, knowing
unconsciously what is in his soul, because of what is written on his
face.