o swing the heavy sledge until his shoulders and
back ached, to send the roaring charges of dynamite digging deeper and
deeper into that thinning vein. And Harry was beside him every step of
the way.

A day's work, the booming charges, and they returned to the stope to
find that the vein had neither lessened nor grown greater. Another
day--and one after that. The vein remained the same, and the two men
turned to mucking that they might fill their ore car with the proceeds
of the various blasts, haul it to the surface by the laborious, slow
process of the man-power elevator, then return once more to their
drilling, begrudging every minute that they were forced to give to the
other work of tearing away the muck and refuse that they might gain the
necessary room to follow the vein.

The days grew to a week, and a week to a fortnight. Once a truck made
its slow way up the tortuous road, chortled away with a load of ore,
returned again and took the remainder from the old, half-rotted ore
bins, to the Sampler, there to be laid aside while more valuable ore
was crushed and sifted for its assays, and readier money taken in. The
Blue Poppy had nothing in its favor. Ten or twenty dollar ore looked
small beside the occasional shipments from the Silver Queen, where
Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill formed the entire working staff until
the much-sought million dollars should flow in and a shaft-house,
portable air pumps, machine drills and all the other attributes of
modern mining methods should be put into operation.

And it appeared that the million dollars would not be slow in coming.
Squint Rodaine had established his office in a small, vacant store
building on the main street, and Fairchild could see, as he went to and
from his work, a constant stream of townspeople as they made that their
goal--there to give their money into the keeping of the be-scarred man
and to trust to the future for wealth. It galled Fairchild, it made
his hate stronger than ever; yet within him there could not live the
hope that the Silver Queen might share the fate of the Blue Poppy.
Other persons besides the Rodaines were interested now, persons who
were putting their entire savings into the investment; and Fairchild
could only grit his teeth and hope--for them--that it would be an
everlasting bonanza. As for the girl who was named as vice-president--

He saw her, day after day, riding through town in the same automobile
that he had helped