e thing: that she had consented to become a
partner with them, that they had won her over, after all. Now, even a
different light came upon the meeting with Barnham in Denver and a
different view to Fairchild. What if she had been playing their game
all along? What if she had been merely a tool for them; what if she
had sent Farrell at their direction, to learn everything he and Harry
knew? What--?

Fairchild sought to put the thought from him and failed. Now that he
looked at it in retrospect, everything seemed to have a sinister
meaning. He had met the girl under circumstances which never had been
explained. The first time she ever had seen him after that she
pretended not to recognize him. Yet, following a conversation with
Maurice Rodaine, she took advantage of an opportunity to talk to him
and freely admitted to him that she had been the person he believed her
to be. True, Fairchild was looking now at his idol through blue
glasses, and they gave to her a dark, mysterious tone that he could not
fathom. There were too many things to explain; too many things which
seemed to connect her directly with the Rodaines; too many things which
appeared to show that her sympathies were there and that she might only
be a trickster in their hands, a trickster to trap him! Even the
episode of the lawyer could be turned to this account. Had not another
lawyer played the friendship racket, in an effort to buy the Blue Poppy
mine?

And here Fairchild smiled grimly. From the present prospects, it would
seem that the gain would have been all on his side, for certainly there
was little to show now toward a possibility of the Blue Poppy ever
being worth anything near the figure which he had been offered for it.
And yet, if that offer had not been made as some sort of stiletto jest,
why had it been made at all? Was it because Rodaine knew that wealth
did lie concealed there? Was it because Squint Rodaine had better
information even than the faithful, hard-working, unfortunate Harry?
Fairchild suddenly took hope. He clenched his hands and he spoke, to
himself, to the darkness and to the spirits of discouragement that were
all about him:

"If it's there, we 'll find it--if we have to work our fingers to the
bone, if we have to starve and die there--we'll find it!"

With that determination, he went to bed, to awake in the morning filled
with a desire to reach the mine, to claw at its vitals with the
sharp-edged drills, t