y lead of a carpenter's
pencil.

PATRICK CASEY
lies here
where the grass grows
and the water runs. He
looked for gold in the desert
and found death.
Buried June 10,
1920

"Ef that suits you," he told Molly, "they's a chap over to Hereford
who's a wolf on carvin'. My letterin's punk. When yore mines pay you
c'ud have it in stone."

"You-all are awful good to me," was all she could trust herself to say.
Each of the Three Musketeers of the Range felt a tug to take her in his
arms and comfort her. Instead they looked at one another, as men of
their breed do. Sam pulled at his mustache. Mormon rubbed the top of his
bald head and Sandy rolled a cigarette and smoked it silently.

Molly ate no supper that night. Before dawn Sandy thought he heard the
door of her room open and soft footfalls stealing down the stairs. When
he went later to the spring he found the grave covered with the wild
blooms that the girl had picked in the dewy dawn.

CHAPTER IV

SANDY CALLS THE TURN

It was a week after Plimsoll's dismissal from the Three Star premises,
that one of the riders, coming back from Hereford with the mail, brought
rumors of a new strike at Dynamite. Neither of the partners paid much
attention to a report so often revived by rumor and as swiftly dying out
again. But the man said that Plimsoll had stated that he expected to go
over to the mining camp in the interests of claims located by Patrick
Casey in which he had a half-interest, by reason of having grubstaked
the prospector.

"There's the thorn under _that_ saddle," said Sandy to Mormon. "That's
what Jim Plimsoll meant by his 'deal.' I don't believe he'd stir up
things unless he was fairly sure there was something doin' oveh to
Dynamite. He may be wrong but he usually tries to bet safe."

"Molly's father located Dynamite, didn't he?"

"So she tells me. Hopeful, as he called it. Seems he picked up some rich
float. This float was where a dyke of porphyry comes up to the surface
an' got weathered away down to the pay ore. Leastwise, this was her
dad's theory. He told her everything he thought as they shacked erlong
together, I reckon, an' she remembers it. He figgers this sylvanite lies
under this porphyry reef, sabe? Porphyry snakes underground, sometimes
fifty feet thick, sometimes twice that, an' hard as steel. Matter of
luck where you hit it how fur you have to go. Cost too much