school–I forgot all about it–where they study about the mines! Are you in the mining business now?”

“Why, yes,” he acknowledged, “but that doesn’t make much difference. I find I can learn something from most everybody.”

“Well, of course, then,” she stammered, “I shouldn’t have said that; but the whole Paymaster dump is covered with that heavy quartz, and everybody knows it’s barren. Are you just looking around or─”

She hesitated politely and as he reached for another specimen she noticed a ring on his finger. 7It was of massive gold and, set in clutching claws, there were three stupendous diamonds. Not imitation stones nor small, off-colored diamonds, but brilliants of the very first water, clear as dew, yet holding in their hearts the faintest suggestion of blue.

“Oh!” she gasped, and as he did not seem to notice, she drew her skirts away with a flourish. “I’m surprised,” she mocked, “that you condescend to speak to us–of course you own your own mines!”

“Nope,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders at her sarcasm, “I’m nothing but a prospector, yet. And you don’t need to be so surprised.”

“No!” she retorted, giving way to swift resentment. “I guess I don’t–when you consider how you got your money. Here’s Mother out cooking for you, and I’m the waiter; and you’re traveling around in racing cars with thousand-dollar rings on your hands. But if old Honest John hadn’t sold all his stock while he was advising my father to hold on─”

“He did not!”

“Yes, he did! He did, too! And now, after Father has been lost in Death Valley, and we have come down to this, your father writes over and offers to buy our stock for just the same as nothing. That’s myring you’re wearing, and the money that paid for it─”

“Oh, all right then,” he sneered, stripping off the ring and handing it abruptly over to her, “if 8it’s your ring, take it! But don’t you say my father─”

“Well, he did,” she declared, “and you can keep your old ring! It won’t bring back my father–now!”

“No, it won’t,” he agreed, “but while we’re about it I just want to tell you something. My father went broke, buying back Paymaster stock from friends he’d advised to go in–and he’s got the stock to prove it–and when he heard that the Colonel was dead he decided to buy in your mother’s. He mortgaged his cows to raise the money for her and then that old terror–I don’t care if she is your mother–she slapped him in the face by refusing it. Well, he didn’t like to say anything, but you can tell her from me she don’t have to cook unless she wants to! She can sell–or buy–a hundred thousand shares of Paymaster any day she says the word; and if that isn’t honest I don’t know what is! I ask you, now; isn’t that fair?”

“What, at ten cents a share? When it used to sell for forty dollars! He’s just trying to get control of the mine. And as for offering to buy or sell, that’s perfectly ludicrous, because he knows we haven’t any money!”

“Well, what doyou want?” he demanded irritably, and then he thrust up his lip. “I know,” he said, “you want your own way! All right, I’ll never trouble you again. You can keep right on guarding that hole-in-the-ground until you dry up 9 and blow away across the desert. And as for that old she-devil─”

He paused at a sudden slam from the kitchen, and Virginia’s eyes grew big; but as he rose to face the Widow Huff he slipped the white rock into his pocket.

10CHAPTER II
The Shotgun Widow

The Widow Huff was burdened with a tray and her eye sought wildly for Virginia but when she glimpsed Wiley moving swiftly towards the door she set down his dinner with a bang. The disrespectful epithet which he had applied to her had been lost in the clatter of plates, but the moment the Widow came into the room she sensed the hair-trigger atmosphere.

“Here!” she ordered, taking command on the instant. “Come back here, young man, and pay me for this dinner! And Virginia Huff, you go out into the kitchen–how many times do I have to speak to you?”

Virginia started and stopped, her resentful eyes on Wiley, a thin smile parting her lips.

“He said─” she began, and then Wiley strode back and slapped down a dollar on the table.

“Yes, and I meant it, too,” he answered fiercely. “There’s your pay–and you can keep your mine.”

“Why, certainly,” responded the Widow without knowing what she was talking about, “and now you eat that dinner!”

11She pointed a finger to the tray of food and looked Wiley Holman in the eye. He wavered, gazing from her to the smiling Virginia, and then he drew up his chair.

“I’ll go you,” he said and showed his teeth in a grin. “You can’t hurt my feelings that way.”

He lifted the T-bone steak from the platter and transferred it swiftly to his plate and then, as he fell to eating ravenously, the Widow condescended to smile.

“When I go to the trouble of cooking a man a steak,” she announced with the suggestion of a swagger, “I expect him to stay and eat it.”

“All right,” mumbled Wiley, and glancing fleeringly at Virginia, he went ahead with his meal.

The Widow looked over her shoulder at her daughter and then back at the stranger, but as she was about to inquire into the cause of their quarrel she spied his diamond ring. She approached him closer under pretext of pouring out some water and then she sank down into a chair.

“That is a very fine ring,” she stated briefly. “Worth fifteen hundred dollars at the least. Haven’t I seen you somewhere, before?”

“Very likely,” returned Wiley, not venturing to look up, “my business takes me everywhere.”

“I thought I recognized you,” went on the Widow ingratiatingly; “you’re a mining man, aren’t you, Mister–er─”

“Wiley,” he answered, and at this bold piece of effrontery Virginia caught her breath.

12“Ah, yes, I remember you now,” said the Widow. “You knew my husband, of course–Colonel Huff? He passed away on the twentieth of July; but there was a time, not so many years ago, that I wore a few diamonds myself.” She fixed her restless eyes on his ring and heaved a discontented sigh. “Virginia,” she directed, “run out into the kitchen and clean up that skillet and all. I declare, you do less and less every day–are you a married man, Mr. Wiley?”

Without awaiting the answer to this portentous question, Virginia flung out into the kitchen and, left alone, the Widow drew nearer and her manner became suddenly confidential.

“I’d like to talk with you,” she began, “about my husband’s mine. Of course you’ve heard of the famous Paymaster–that’s the mill right over east of town–but there are very few men that know what I do about the reasons why that mine was shut down. It was commonly reported that Colonel Huff was trying to get possession of the property, but the truth of the matter is he was deceived by old John Holman and finally left holding the sack. You see, it was this way. My husband and John Holman had always been lifelong friends, but Colonel Huff was naturally generous while Holman thought of nothing but money. Well, my husband discovered the Paymaster–he was led to it by an Indian that he had saved from being killed by the soldiers–but, not having any money, he went to John Holman and they developed the mine together.