isper came her answer, in a voice which lacked the
nonchalance she tried to give it. "I daresay I'll be as friendly ... as
you deserve."

"You've got to be a heap more friendly than that, partner."

They had come back to the boardwalk which marked the parting of the ways
for them. She had won control of herself again and offered him a steady
hand.

"I suppose we'll not see each other again.... Good-by."

He was suddenly conscious that he desired very greatly her regard and
her approval.

"Is that all you have to say? Are you going to leave me like this?"

"What more is there to be said?" She asked it quietly, with the calm
courage that had its birth in hopelessness.

"This much, at least. I don't release you from ... the old tie that used
to bind us. We're still going to be dream friends. I haven't forgotten
little Moya, who kissed me one night on the deck of the _Victorian_."

"She was a baby at the time," answered the girl.

He had not released her hand. Now, as he looked straight into the sweet
face with eyes like troubled stars, it came to him on a flood of light
that he had made a fatal mistake.

He dropped her fingers abruptly. "Good-by."

His crisp footfalls seemed to print themselves on a heart of lead. How
could she know that he carried away with him a vision of sweet youth
that was to endure!

CHAPTER XVIII

TWO AMBUSHES

The clock at the new Verinder Building showed ten minutes past eleven as
Jack Kilmeny took the Utah Junction road out of Goldbanks with his
loaded ore wagon. It was a night of scudding clouds, through which
gleamed occasionally a fugitive moon. The mountain road was steep and
narrow, but both the driver and the mules were used to its every turn
and curve. In early days the highgrader had driven a stage along it many
a night when he could not have seen the ears of the bronchos.

His destination was the Jack Pot, a mine three miles from town, where
intermittently for months he had been raising worthless rock in the hope
of striking the extension of the Mollie Gibson vein. It was not quite
true, as Bleyer had intimated, that his lease was merely a blind to
cover ore thefts, though undoubtedly he used it for that purpose
incidentally.

Bleyer had guessed shrewdly that Kilmeny would drive out to the Jack
Pot, put up in the deserted bunk-house till morning, and then haul the
ore down to the junction to ship to the smelter on the presumption that
it had been taken from t