by
previous orders and could not be delivered for a month. A month! And
with the water mounting up in his shaft like the interest on his notes.
It was no time for half measures. He leapt into his racer and burned up
the road to Vegas. Three days later he returned with an old gas engine
that he had salvaged from an abandoned mine and by the end of the week,
by working day and night, he had the pumps lifting water. And then again
he remembered Virginia.

He had thought of her, of course, when he was speeding to and fro, but
he was hardly in the mood for sentiment. There were more things to go
wrong than he had thought humanly possible in the management of a mine,
and between ordering his machinery and taking on new men he had had
scant leisure for affairs of the heart. He was young and inexperienced
and the dealers took advantage of it to foist off old stock and odd
parts, and then his engineers became fractious and disgruntled because
he expected quick results. It was all very different from what he had
expected when he had taken over the Paymaster lease, and yet it had to
be endured and muddled through somehow until the mine was safely his
own. Then out would come the engines, and all second-hand machinery and
makeshift parts, and with a superintendent who knew his job he would
lean back in comfort and learn the mining business by proxy.

Wiley shaved that evening and went down through the town, but when he
put his hand on the Widow's gate his resolution failed him. He had
placed her under bonds to keep the peace, and she had lived up to the
undertaking scrupulously, but within her own house she had certain
rights and privileges which even he dared not invade. If he stepped in
that doorway she would order him out; and unquestionably she would be
within her rights, since every man's house is his castle. So, on the
very threshold of Virginia's retreat, he drew back and went to see Death
Valley Charley.

Death Valley was drunk, but his conscience was still active and he burst
into a voluble explanation.

"No, I gave her that stock," he protested earnestly, "but she made me
take it back.

"'It ain't mine,' she says, 'and I'll work my hands off before I'll take
charity from anybody.'

"'No, you keep it,' I says, just exactly like you tole me, 'because I'm
your guardian, and all; and Wiley he says that I'm a hell of a poor one,
because I sold him that stock for nothing. No,' I says, just exactly
like you tole me, 'I w