"WE'RE RICH, BILL, DEAR"

Bill started for the door, stumbling against a chair in his flight. "I'll kill this darned bird!" he threatened viciously. "That's the second time she's tipped my hand lately."

Luella looked up at him sidewise and blinked in the effort to remember something.

"Bill Dale's parrot tipped Bill's hand," she muttered, and turned her head the other way. "We'll lay low. See the recorr-r——" She turned and walked up Bill's arm to his shoulder, tilting forward there and making kissy sounds against his crimson cheek. "I can't believe it. We're rich, Bill, dear." Then she laughed in a shrill falsetto.

"Better come on back and finish your pie before I boot you outside," Don observed drily. "I reckon maybe you can explain where the bird learned all that. Never saw yuh on the run before, Bill."

At that, Bill returned and stood behind his chair, looking down honestly into Don Hunter's searching eyes.

"She learnt it eavesdropping," Bill said bluntly. "She does that trick, every once in awhile. She got it straight, too. I—asked Doris to marry me, and she said it would be a good deal as you two say. I didn't ask her until I was dead certain I'd be able to give her luxuries a prospector couldn't afford. I struck the richest vein of gold-bearing quartz, Don, that I ever saw in the ground. I've got three claims on the lead, and I located one for Doris, too.

"I didn't come over to go to work. I came to ask you if you'd have me in the family, and I wanted to get your advice about what to do with my claims. There are several thousand dollars' worth in sight—at a rough guess. And the vein looks strong." He smiled at Mrs. Don, who smiled back mistily. "I didn't mean to spring it all on you folks this evening. I—kind of wanted to get my nerve tuned up, and tell you with trimmings. But the darned parrot beat me to it, so——"

"So you'd better sit right down and eat your pie," Mrs. Don finished for him, laughing tremulously. "You're a good boy, Bill. We—we'd hate awfully to lose our girl; she's all we've got. But—far as I'm concerned, I'd rather it would be you—if you're sure you can take care of her."

"The boss has said it." Don gave his wife the look one bestows upon some treasured thing. "Sit down—sit down! Don't look as if you expected to be lynched for it. The women folks run this house, Bill. So you struck it rich! You say you're sure it ain't just a fluke?"

Doris rose hastily, asking permission with her eyes.

"Fluke!" She glanced eloquently at Bill, then at her father. "You wait a minute. I'll show you whether it's a fluke. There. I hid it under my gloves because I was going to wait till morning before we said anything. Look at that, will you, Mother? And cast your critical glance at that, Dad Hunter!" She placed a piece of ore beside each plate and returned triumphantly to her seat.

A lump came into Bill's throat as he watched those two, slipping past middle age, never quite reaching rainbow's end except in love. Mrs. Don lifted the sample, looked at it, leaned and held it under the direct rays of the lamp, glanced diffidently at Bill, then looked questioningly across the table at Don.

"It's—gold, isn't it? Without my glasses I—but it looks——"

Don deliberately produced his reading glasses from an inner pocket of his vest, tucked the bows over his ears and picked up the specimen which Bill had chipped off the vein and given to Doris. Don moved his tongue in his cheek while he looked, slanting the rock so that the lamp shone on it. He was not a miner himself, but he had lived too long in Nevada not to know minerals fairly well. He pushed his glasses down his nose until he could look over them at Bill.

"How much of this have you got in sight, did you say?"

"I estimated it roughly at about five thousand dollars. When I first located the vein I mortared and panned enough to get a fair idea of how it was running. The vein averaged about ten inches, fairly uniform so far. The storm last night uncovered it so now it stands out clean from the side of the cut like an outcropping; or it did, before I covered it up. I didn't want to come away and leave it open. There are some strangers camped right beside me. Government men—but I didn't like the look of their packer."

"Didn't like the look—my goodness, Mother! The fellow came to the tent when I was there getting ready to start home, and he started snooping around in the corner where Bill had a lot of this ore. He was bound and de-ter-mined he'd see what was in the sack. I told him more than once to go—but I had to shoot into the ground beside him before he'd go. He went then, all right!"

Her mother looked alarmed. "Why, Doris! And where was Bill?"

"I was up at the claims with Tommy," Bill explained. "You can see, maybe, why I can't be away long—and why I covered up this vein."

"Oh dear!" Mrs. Hunter leaned her head on her hand as if she had become suddenly aware of a great weariness. "Must you go through all that fighting and grasping over gold? A boom always seems to me like a lot of wild animals fighting and tearing at one another, to get a bone which the first one on the hunting ground has already cleaned." She closed her eyes tightly for an instant, then looked wistfully from Doris to Bill. "I don't know but what gold costs more than it's worth, after all," she said. "And the more you have, the more terrible the price. I don't know but what I'd just about as soon see you two face poverty together, as to see you face a boom. You know," she added apologetically, "I was born in Virginia City. I've seen sudden wealth and sudden poverty. And the sudden wealth was worse, sometimes—though I never heard of a man shooting himself because he struck it rich, and they do sometimes when they lose everything."

"That's what Mr. Rayfield meant, I guess. He said if Bill had a lot of ore like the sample he saw, he'd have Bill's friends pray that wealth wouldn't spoil him." Doris smiled tolerantly at her mother, as youth is wont to smile at experience.

"Who's Rayfield?" Don Hunter pushed back his chair with a rasping sound on the bare floor. "How did he come to see a sample? Doris, you help your mother with the dishes; you ought to have a lot to talk over. Bill, come on out on the porch and let's get at the bottom of this. So far I can't make head nor tail of anything."

Out on the porch the two men smoked in silence, watching the twinkling of camp fires half a mile away, where travelers were availing themselves of running water and shade for one comfortable camp on the desert. The Hunter ranch saw many such wayfarers, for it lay close to the highway (such as it was) and formed a sort of oasis, all the more enticing because one could buy fresh eggs and milk and, if one were lucky, a loaf or two of delicious bread. Mrs. Don called such revenue her pin money, and Don himself grinned and wondered sometimes what she ever did with it.

"Who's Rayfield?" Don repeated his question abruptly, after a lapse of several minutes.

Bill told him, making few words of it but contriving to paint a very clear picture in Don's mind.

"They didn't come this way—or if they did, they didn't stop." Don seemed to consider that omission somewhat derogatory to the character of the government men.

"They didn't mention this place at all," Bill said. "I got the idea they diverged from the trail and cut towards the likeliest mineral showings. That would put them south."

"What's your plan, Bill? Or haven't you got any?" Don inspected his pipe, prodding at the tobacco with his finger. "Yuh want to cash in as soon as yuh can, I reckon—anxious for the honeymoon."

"You've been there," Bill retorted. "Sure, I'm anxious. That little girl has been hankering for the ocean and palm trees all her life, she said."

"They won't run away in the next year or so, that I know of. Well, I'm no mining shark, but I reckon I better trail over to your diggin's and see what you've got. Maybe them fellows over there can be some help, and then again, maybe you want to steer clear of them. Just because a man draws down his pay from Uncle Sam don't give him any guarantee from the Almighty that he's a he angel. Doris seems to think so."

"What I want, Don, is for you to take a hand and help me get started off on the right foot. I can see it's going to be a mighty big proposition, and I don't want to have the same experience my dad had. On the other hand, I don't want to act the darned fool sitting over my claims with a shotgun, afraid somebody's going to rob me. There's a safe line betwixt and between that I want to take and keep. And I wouldn't ask you to make the trip over there, if I didn't know the stuff's there; acres of it, by the looks."

Don sucked at his pipe for some time before he spoke. Then,

"I'll do all I can, Bill. If you're going to be one of the family I might as well start bossing yuh now. I want to see yuh make good without hurting the other fellow. It can be done, and if it's done rightly, there ain't any cleaner money in the world than what comes out of the ground. Mines or ranches, you're giving the world something it never had before; something it needs. Most money-making is just swapping the ownership of necessities, or else changing the shape and form of them and selling them that way. But when you take something outa old Mother Earth, you've got it clean. What I can't stomach is the way crooks come flockin' around every new strike, and making it rotten business.

"Every boom suffers from 'em. When the news of this leaks out—has it leaked out, yet?"

Bill shook his head, though Don could not see him in the dark.

"Not so far as I know. I just brought down supplies and a mucker from Goldfield—and there's something funny happened up there. The darn parrot was outside while I was in recording the claims, and when I came out, she commenced talking a new speech that I'll swear I never taught her. She got it off to-night, if you noticed." Bill blushed consciously, but went on. "She said, 'Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. We'll lay low—see the recorder.' Only, she couldn't quite get the last word out. Now, she heard that said in Goldfield, while I was in the recorder's office, or she couldn't have repeated it. I've learned that much about parrots. She talks right along, and seems to know what she means—way she calls me down, sometimes, is right human—but she has to hear a sentence before she can say it. One hearing's enough, if she happens to take a notion to the words. But it was funny, her saying that." He flicked the ash off his cigarette. "I shut her up till I was ready to leave," he added. "I guess it didn't amount to anything. I wasn't trailed, anyway."

"What about these fellows camped up there? You sure they ain't——"

"Oh, they came from Las Vegas way. No, they're not on my trail—or if they are they're pretty damned smooth."

"Crooks are," Don remarked laconically. "How would the parrot be able to tip your hand? Ever think that out?"

"No-o—only, I talk to the menagerie in camp, of course. When a fellow doesn't see a human for weeks at a time, he'll talk to anything; and Luella's next to human, seems like. Yes, I talked about buying her a gold perch, I remember, and about striking it. I was one tickled man, Don, when I first uncovered that vein and saw the gold showing right up in the rock."

"Mh-hm—well, I reckon she must have overheard you talking about it. Same as she must have heard some remarks, coming over, that was kind of embarrassing for a minute, when repeated. I reckon I'll have to get you outa bed early, to-morrow morning, Bill. I'm getting mighty curious to see those government men and have a talk with them." He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose. "I've learned that one hoof track is good as a dozen when you're trailin' stock. A critter's got to be present, to make one track. And I can't seem to see you teachin' that parrot to say that she's tipped your hand, and you'll lie low. Some other critter made that track, Bill. If I don't miss my guess, you'll have somebody trying to horn in somehow. Let's go in. I want to talk to Doris about that feller she took a shot at, that was nosin' around your samples."