rounded a corner and, seeing her, hastened to join her. She
extended her hand; they chatted a moment, then strolled up the street
together. Fairchild watched blankly, then turned at a chuckle just
behind him emanating from the bearded lips of an old miner, loafing on
the stone coping in front of a small store.

"Pick the wrong filly, pardner?" came the query. Fairchild managed to
smile.

"Guess so." Then he lied quickly. "I thought she was a girl from
Denver."

"Her?" The old miner stretched. "Nope. That's Anita Richmond, old
Judge Richmond's daughter. Guess she must have been expecting that
young fellow--or she would n't have cut you off so short. She ain't
usually that way."

"Her fiance?" Fairchild asked the question with misgiving. The miner
finished his stretch and added a yawn to it. Then he looked
appraisingly up the street toward the retreating figures. "Well, some
say he is and some say he ain't. Guess it mostly depends on the girl,
and she ain't telling yet."

"And the man--who is he?"

"Him? Oh, he 's Maurice Rodaine. Son of a pretty famous character
around here, old Squint Rodaine. Owns the Silver Queen property up the
hill. Ever hear of him?"

The eyes of Robert Fairchild narrowed, and a desire to fight--a longing
to grapple with Squint Rodaine and all that belonged to him--surged
into his heart. But his voice, when he spoke, was slow and suppressed.

"Squint Rodaine? Yes, I think I have. The name sounds rather
familiar."

Then, deliberately, he started up the street, following at a distance
the man and the girl who walked before him.

CHAPTER VI

There was no specific reason why Robert Fairchild should follow Maurice
Rodaine and the young woman who had been described to him as the
daughter of Judge Richmond, whoever he might be. And Fairchild sought
for none--within two weeks he had been transformed from a plodding,
methodical person into a creature of impulses, and more and more, as
time went on, he was allowing himself to be governed by the snap
judgment of his brain rather than by the carefully exacting mind of a
systematic machine, such as he had been for the greater part of his
adult life. All that he cared to know was that resentment was in his
heart,--resentment that the family of Rodaine should be connected in
some way with the piquant, mysterious little person he had helped out
of a predicament on the Denver road the day before. And, to his
chagrin,