It was rather late in the autumn, too late to admit of a rush of prospectors to the shut-in valley, when the fame of the new gold-bearing district in the Elk Mountains began to be noised about. As bonanza fame is like to be, the earlier bruitings of it were as nebulous as the later and more detailed accounts were fabulous. Some garbled story of the fight for possession found its way into the newspapers; and since this had its starting-point in the resentment of the Aspen newsgatherer who had been so curtly sent to the right-about by Jeffard, it became the basis of an accusation, which was scathing and fearless, or covert and retractable, in just proportion to the obsequiousness of the journalistic accusers.

In its most favorable rendering this story was an ugly one; but here again chance, in the form of reportorial inaccuracy, was kind to Jeffard. From his boyhood people had been stumbling over his name; and with ample facilities for verifying the spelling of it the reporters began, continued, and ended by making it "Jeffers," "Jeffreys," and in one instance even "Jefferson." Hence, with Bartrow as the single exception, no one who knew Jeffard identified him with the man who had figured as the putative villain-hero in the fight for possession.

Bartrow read the account of the race, the shooting affray, and the subsequent details of the capitalizing of the Midas, with Denby as its promoter and Jeffard as sole owner, with judgment suspended. It was not in him to condemn any man unheard; and Jeffard had put himself safely out of reach of queryings, friendly or otherwise, by burying himself for the winter with the development force which the promoter had hurried across the range before the snows isolated the shut-in valley. Later, when he had to pay the note in the Leadville bank, Bartrow had a twinge of dismay; but again invincible fairness came to the rescue, and he lifted the dishonored paper at a time when he could ill afford to, promising himself that this, too, should be held in solution; should not even be precipitated in confidence with any one.

This promise he kept until Constance Elliott plumbed the depths of him, as she was prone to do when he gave evidence of having anything to conceal. The occasion was the midwinter ball of the First Families of Colorado; and having more than one score to settle with the young miner, who had lately been conspicuous only by his absence, Connie had arbitrarily revised Bartrow's programme,—which contemplated a monopoly of all the dances Miss Van Vetter would give him.

"Well, catalogue 'em—what have I done?" demanded the unabashed one, when she had marched him into that particular alcove of the great hotel dining-room which did temporary duty as a conservatory.

"Several things." Stephen Elliott's daughter was in the mood called pertness in disagreeable young women. "Have you quite forgotten that I stand in loco parentis to the giddy and irresponsible young person whose card you have covered with your scrawly autographs?"

The idea was immensely entertaining to the young miner, who laughed so heartily that a sentimental couple billing and cooing behind the fan-palms took wing immediately. "You? you chaperoning Myr—Miss Van Vetter? That's a good one!"

"It's a bad one, where you are concerned. What do you mean by such an inconsistent breach of the proprieties?"

"Inconsistent? I'm afraid I don't quite catch on."

"Yes, inconsistent. You bury yourself for months on end in that powder-smelly old tunnel of yours, and about the time we've comfortably forgotten you, you straggle in with a dress-coat on your arm and proceed to monopolize one of us. What do you take us for?"

It was on the tip of Bartrow's tongue to retort that he would very much like to take Miss Van Vetter for better or worse, but he had not the courage of his convictions. So he kept well in the middle of the road, and made the smoke-blackened tunnel his excuse for the inconsistency.

"It isn't 'months,' Connie; or at least it's only two of them. You know I'd be glad enough to chase myself into Denver every other day if I could. But it is coming down to brass tacks with us in the Little Myriad, and I've just got to keep my eye on the gun."

Whereupon pertness, or the Constance Elliott transmutation of it, vanished, and she made him sit down.

"Tell me all about the Little Myriad, Dick. Is it going to keep its promise?"

The Little Myriad's owner sought and found a handkerchief, using it mopwise. Curious questions touching the prospects of his venture on Topeka Mountain were beginning to have a perspiratory effect upon him.

"I wish I could know for sure, Connie. Sometimes I think it will; and some other times I should think it means to go back on me,—if I dared to."

"Isn't the lead still well-defined?" Constance dropped into the mining technicalities with the easy familiarity of one born in the metalliferous West.

"It is now; but two months ago, or thereabouts, it pinched out entirely. That is why I hibernated."

"Was the last mill-run encouraging?"

"N-no, I can't say that it was. The ore—what little there is of it—seems to grade rather lower as we go in. But it's a true fissure, and it must begin to go the other way when we get deep enough."

For a half-score of fan-sweeps Connie was silent. Then: "Is the purse growing light, Dickie? Because if it is, poppa's is still comfortably fat."

Bartrow laughed in a way to indicate that the strain was lessened for the moment. "I believe you and your father would give away the last dollar you have in the world. But it hasn't come to a fresh loan with me yet."

"When it does, you know where to float it."

"When it does, I sha'n't rob my best friends. If I have to borrow more money for development, I'm afraid the loan will be classed as 'extra hazardous.' But you said there were several things. What else have I done?"

"The next is something you haven't done. You haven't written a line to Mr. Lansdale in all these weeks,—not even to thank him for taking your foolish telegram about the Margaret Gannon crisis seriously. And he tells me he has written you twice."

"I'm a miserable sinner, and letter writing isn't in me. Is Lansdale here? I'll go and square myself in the most abject formula you can suggest."

"He isn't here. He is out at Bennett on a ranch."

"On a ranch in midwinter? Who on top of earth told him to do that?"

"One of the doctors. I wanted to dissuade him, but I hadn't the heart to try. He is so anxious to live."

"Naturally." Bartrow eyed his companion in a way which was meant to be a measure of the things he knew and would by no means tell, but Constance was opening and shutting her fan with inthought paramount, and saw it not. Whereat Bartrow was brutal enough to say: "Is he going to make a go of it?"

"Oh, I hope so, Dick! It is such a pathetic struggle. And he is like all the others who are best worth keeping alive: he won't let any one help him. Just fancy him working for his board on a dreary prairie ranch! The monotony of it is enough to kill him."

"I should say so. Lamb ranch, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Then I can imagine the hilarity of it. Up at all sorts of hours and in all weathers feeding and watering. That isn't what he needs. A wagon trip in summer, with good company, lots of outdoors, and nothing to do but eat and sleep, would be more like it. If he pulls through to spring, and the Myriad will let up on me for a month or two, I don't know but I shall be tempted to make him try it."

"Oh, Dick! would you?" There was a quick upflash of wistful emotion in the calm gray eyes. Bartrow set it down to a fresh growth in perspicacity on his own part that he was able to interpret it—or thought he was. But the little upflash went out like a taper in the dark with the added afterthought. "It's no use, Dick. The Myriad won't let you."

"Perhaps it will; though I'm bound to admit that it doesn't look that way at present. Now, if Jef—"

From what has gone before it will be understood that any mention of Jeffard for good or ill was the one thing which Bartrow had promised himself to avoid at all hazards; wherefore he broke the name in the midst, coughed, dragged out his watch,—in short, did what manlike untactfulness may do to create a diversion, and at the end of it found the unafraid eyes fixed upon him with mandatory orders in them.

"Go on," she said calmly. "If Mr. Jeffard"—

"Really, Connie, I must break it off short; my time's up. Don't you hear the orchestra? Miss Van Vetter will"—

But Connie was not to be turned aside by any consideration for Bartrow's engagements or her own; nor yet by the inflow into the alcove-conservatory of sundry other fanning couples lately freed from the hop-and-slide of the two-step. Nor yet again by the appearance of young Mr. Theodore Calmaine, who came up behind Bartrow and was straightway transfixed and driven forth with pantomimic cut and thrust.

"Myra will have no difficulty in finding a partner. Don't be foolish, Dick. I have known all along that you have learned something about Mr. Jeffard which you wouldn't tell me. You may remember that you have persistently ignored my questions in your answers to my letters,—and I paid you back by telling you little or nothing about Myra. Now what were you going to say?"

"I was going to say that if Jeffard were like what he used to be, he would do for Lansdale what I shall probably not be able to do."

"What do you know about Mr. Jeffard?"

"What all the world knows—and a little more. Of course you have read what the newspapers had to say?"

"I have never seen a mention of his name."

"Why, you must have; they were full of it a month or two ago, and will be again as soon as the range opens and we find out what the big bonanza has been doing through the winter. You don't mean to say that you didn't read about the free-gold strike in the Elk Mountains, and the locomotive race, and the shooting scrape in the hotel at Aspen, and all that?"

The steady eyes were veiled and Connie's breath came in nervous little gasps. Any man save downright Richard Bartrow would have made a swift diversion, were it only to an open window or back to the ballroom. But he sat stocklike and silent, letting her win through the speechlessness of it to the faltered reply.

"I—I saw it; yes. But the name of that man was—was not Jeffard."

"No, it was Jeffers, or anything that came handy in the newspaper accounts. But that was a reporter's mistake."

"Dick,"—the steadfast eyes were transfixing him again,—"are you quite sure of that?"

"I ought to be. I was the man who helped him out at the pinch and got him started on the locomotive chase."

"You helped him?—then all those things they said about him were true?"

It was Bartrow's turn to hesitate. "I—I'm trying not to believe that, Connie."

"But you know the facts; or at least, more of them than the newspapers told. Did the claim really belong to him, or to James Garvin?"

Bartrow crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and again had recourse to his watch.

"I wish you'd leave the whole business up in the air, Connie, the way I'm trying to. It doesn't seem quite fair, somehow, to condemn him behind his back."

"But the facts," she insisted. "You know them, don't you?"

"Yes; and they're against him." Bartrow confessed it in sheer desperation. "The claim was Garvin's; Jeffard not only admitted it, but he started out on the chase with the declared determination of standing between Garvin and those two blacklegs who were trying to plunder him. That's all; that's as far as my facts go. Beyond that you—and the newspapers—know as much as I do."

"Not quite all, Dick. You say you helped him; that means that you lent him money, or borrowed it for him. Did he ever pay it back?"

Bartrow got upon his feet at that and glowered down upon her with mingled chagrin and awe in gaze and answer.

"Say, Connie, you come precious near to being uncanny at times, don't you know it? That was the one thing I didn't mean to tell any one. Yes, I borrowed for him; and no, he didn't pay it back. That's all—all of the all. If you put me in a stamp-mill you couldn't pound out anything else. Now, for pity's sake, let me get back to Miss Van Vetter before I fall in with the notion that I'm too transparent to be visible to the naked eye."

She rose and took his arm.

"You're good, Dickie," she said softly; "much too good for this world. I'm sorry for you, because it earns you so many buffetings."

"And you think I'm in for another on Jeffard's account."

"I am sure you are—now. The last time I saw him he wore a mask; a horrible mask of willful degradation and cynicism and self-loathing; but I saw behind it."

They were making a slow circuit of the ballroom in search of Connie's cousin, and the throng and the music isolated them.

"What did you see?"

"I saw the making of a strong man; strong for good or for evil; a man who could compel the world-attitudes that most of us have to sue for, or who would be strong enough on the evil side to flout and ignore them. I thought then that he was at the parting of the ways, but it seems I was mistaken,—that the real balancing moment came with what poppa calls the 'high-mountain bribe,'—Satan's offer of the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them."

Now, a thronged ballroom is scarcely a fit place for heart-to-heart outreachings; but there be loyal hearts who are not constrained by their encompassments, and Bartrow was of that brotherhood. They had attained a corner where one might swing a short-sword without fear of beheading the nearest of the dancers or out-sitters, and he faced about and took both of Connie's hands in his.

"Do you know, little sister, I'm awfully glad you're able to talk that way about him. There was a time when I began to be afraid—for your sake first, and afterward for"—

It is conceivable that the frankest of young women may have some reserves of time and place, if not of subjects, and before honest Dick could finish, Constance had freed herself and was reproaching young Calmaine for not seeking her out for the dance in process,—which was his.

Teddy's apology had in it the flavor of long acquaintance and the insolence thereof. "You're a cool one," he said, when they had left Bartrow behind. "As if I didn't stand for five good minutes at the door of that conservatory place, with you eye-pistoling and daggering me to make me go away!"

Thinking about it afterward, Bartrow wondered a little that Connie seemed bent on ignoring him through the remainder of the functional hours, large and small, but so it was. And when finally he was constrained to put Miss Van Vetter in the carriage, Connie's good-night and good-by were of the briefest. Miss Van Vetter, too, was silent on the homeward drive, and this Connie remarked, charging it openly to Dick's account when they were before the fire in Myra's room contemplating the necessity of going to bed.

"No, Mr. Bartrow was all that the most exacting person could demand,—and more," said Miss Van Vetter, going to the mirror to begin the relaxing process. "It was something he told me."

"About Mr. Jeffard?"

"Yes; how did you know?"

"I didn't know—I guessed."

"Isn't it dreadful!"

"No. Some of the other things he did might have been that; but this is unspeakable."

Myra turned her back upon the mirror and came to stand behind Connie's chair with her arms about her cousin's neck.

"Connie, dear, do you know that one time I was almost afraid that you,—but now I am glad,—glad that your point of view is—is quite extrinsic, you know."

Connie's gaze was upon the fire in the grate, fresh-stirred and glowing, a circumstance which may have accounted for the sudden trembling of the eyelids and the upwelling of tears in the steadfast eyes. And as for the nervous little quaver in her voice, there was fatigue to answer for that.

"I—I'm so glad you all take that for granted," she said. "I don't know what I should do if you didn't."

And a little later Myra went to bed and to sleep, wondering if, after all, there were not secret places in the heart of her transparent kinswoman which evaded the search-warrant of cousinly disinterest.