Casey; her father's trail-chum by
mountain and desert; the death of Casey, the rescue of Molly, the strike
at Dynamite.

Much about Sandy's part in it all Blake did not use. He learned little
and said nothing of Plimsoll's attempt to get the girl under his
control, of the wild ride across the county line. Blake's general
canniness concentrated wherever his personal interests were concerned
and he had made up his mind that Sandy Bourke was a man whom it would
not pay to offend. He might never see the story in print, then again he
might, and Blake, very likely, would return to Casey Town once in a
while with Keith.

But it was a good story. A Sunday feature story if he could strengthen
it a little. If the mine made the girl a millionairess it would carry
the yarn as sheer news, but Blake wanted the story to help to carry the
mine, to bring in the money from the outside to exploit Casey Town and
the Keith holdings.

Keith had the capital and was willing enough to put it into developing
the Molly Mine if necessary, but it was a business principle of his
never to use his own money when he could get hold of some one else's.
His stock in the Molly Mine he meant to hold on to, not to sell, but,
with the profits from the sale of his promoter's shares of the "Groups,"
he expected to mine the Molly claims.

He had turned his eyes toward oil of late, scenting quick turns and this
took money. His wife took more, his son, just out of college, took all
that he could get. Mrs. Keith seemed to regard her husband's
bank-account much as the wife of a farmer might regard the spring in the
meadow. With the extravagance of the post-war period, the advance in
prices, the amounts she spent were staggering even to Keith, who set no
limits on his own ability to make money. To suggest retrenchment would
not merely have had small effect upon his wife, but any curtailment
would infallibly hurt the standing of the Keith investments. New York
was full of people with money to invest. Profiteering, easy-come money,
a lot of it. Easy-go money, too, when the profiteers, still dazzled by
their riches, totally unconscious of real values, would meet Keith,
thinking their money an open sesame to equality with such financiers.

Then Keith entertained them, taking them to his clubs--not his best--to
his home where he dazzled them, fogged them in an atmosphere where they
were ill at ease though striving to cover it; Keith, drawing them aside
when the tim