The evening of this second day found Struve still not accounted for.

CHAPTER X -- IN A TUNNEL OF THE MAL PAIS

Although Miss Kinney had a.s.sured Neill that she was glad to be rid of him it occurred to her more than once in the course of the day that he was taking her a little too literally. On Sunday she did not see a glimpse of him after he left. At lunch he did not appear, nor was he in evidence at dinner. Next morning she learned that he had been to breakfast and had gone before she got down. She withheld judgment till lunch, being almost certain that he would be on hand to that meal. His absence roused her resentment and her independence. If he didn't care to see her she certainly did not want to see him. She was not going to sit around and wait for him to take her down into the mine he had promised she should see. Let him forget his appointment if he liked. He would wait a long time before she made any more engagements with him.

About this time Dunke began to flatter himself that he had made an impression. Miss Kinney was all smiles. She was graciously pleased to take a horseback ride over the camp with him, nor did he know that her roving eye was constantly on the lookout for a certain spare, clean-built figure she could recognize at a considerable distance by the easy, elastic tread. Monday evening the mine-owner called upon her and Mrs. Collins, whose brother also was among the missing, and she was delighted to accept his invitation to go through the Mal Pais workings with him.

"That is, if Mrs. Collins will go, too," she added as an afterthought.

That young woman hesitated. Though this man had led his miners against her brother, she was ready to believe the attack not caused by personal enmity. The best of feeling did not exist between the owners of the Jackrabbit and those of the Mal Pais. Dunke was suspected of boldly crossing into the territory of his neighbor where his veins did not lead. But there had been no open rupture. For the very reason that an undertow of feeling existed Nellie consented to join the party. She did not want by a refusal to put into words a hostility that he had always carefully veiled. She was in the position of not wanting to go at all, yet wanting still less to decline to do so.

"I shall be glad to go," she said.

"Fine. We'll start about nine, or nine-thirty say. I'll drive up in a surrey."

"And we'll have lunch for the party put up at the hotel here. I'll get some fruit to take along," said Margaret.

"We'll make a regular picnic of it," added Dunke heartily. "You'll enjoy eating out of a dinner-pail for once just like one of my miners, Miss Kinney."

After he had gone Margaret mentioned to Mrs. Collins her feeling concerning him. "I don't really like him. Or rather I don't give him my full confidence. He seems pleasant enough, too." She laughed a little as she added: "You know he does me the honor to admire me."

"Yes, I know that. I was wondering how you felt about it."

"How ought one to feel about one of the great mining kings of the West?"

"Has that anything to do with it, my dear? I mean his being a mining king?" asked Mrs. Collins gently.

Margaret went up to her and kissed her. "You're a romantic little thing.

That's because you probably married a heaven-sent man. We can't all be fortunate."

"We none of us need to marry where we don't love."

"Goodness me! I'm not thinking of marrying Mr. Dunke's millions. The only thing is that I don't have a Croesus to exhibit every day at my chariot wheels. It's horrid of course, but I have a natural feminine reluctance to surrendering him all at once. I don't object in the least to trampling on him, but somehow I don't feel ready for his declaration of independence."

"Oh, if that's all!" her friend smiled.

"That's quite all."

"Perhaps you prefer Texans who come from the Panhandle."

Mrs. Collins happened to be looking straight at her out of her big brown eyes. Wherefore she could not help observing the pink glow that deepened in the soft cheeks.

"He hasn't preferred me much lately."

Nellie knitted her brow in perplexity. "I don't understand. Steve's been away, too, nearly all the time. Something is going on that we don't know about."

"Not that I care. Mr. Neill is welcome to stay away."

Her new friend shot a swift slant look at her. "I don't suppose you trample on him much."

Margaret flushed. "No, I don't. It's the other way. I never saw anybody so rude. He does not seem to have any saving sense of the proper thing."

"He's a man, dearie, and a good one. He may be untrammeled by convention, but he is clean and brave. He has eyes that look through cowardice and treachery, fine strong eyes that are honest and unafraid."

"Dear me, you must have studied them a good deal to see all that in them," said Miss Peggy lightly, yet pleased withal.

"My dear," reproached her friend, so seriously that Peggy repented.

"I didn't really mean it," she laughed. "I've heard already on good authority that you see no man's eyes except the handsome ones in the face of Mr. Tim Collins."

"I do think Tim has fine eyes," blushed the accused.

"No doubt of it. Since you have been admiring my young man I must praise yours," teased Miss Kinney.

"Am I to wish you joy? I didn't know he was your young man," flashed back the other.

"I understand that you have been trying to put him off on me."

"You'll find he does not need any 'putting off' on anybody."

"At least, he has a good friend in you. I think I'll tell him, so that when he does condescend to become interested in a young woman he may refer her to you for a recommendation."

The young wife borrowed for the occasion some of Miss Peggy's audacity.

"I'm recommending him to that young woman now, my dear," she made answer.

Dunke's party left for the mine on schedule time, Water-proof coats and high lace-boots had been borrowed for the ladies as a protection against the moisture they were sure to meet in the tunnels one thousand feet below the ground. The mine-owner had had the hoisting-engine started for the occasion, and the cage took them down as swiftly and as smoothly as a metropolitan elevator. Nevertheless Margaret clung tightly to her friend, for if was her first experience of the kind. She had never before dropped nearly a quarter of a mile straight down into the heart of the earth and she felt a smothered sensation, a sense of danger induced by her unaccustomed surroundings. It is the unknown that awes, and when she first stepped from the cage and peered down the long, low tunnel through which a tramway ran she caught her breath rather quickly.

She had an active imagination, and she conjured cave-ins, explosions, and all the other mine horrors she had read about.

Their host had spared no expense to make the occasion a gala one.

Electric lights were twinkling at intervals down the tunnel, and an electric ore-car with a man in charge was waiting to run them into the workings nearly a mile distant. Dunke dealt out candles and a.s.sisted his guests into the car, which presently carried them deep into the mine.

Margaret observed that the timbered sides of the tunnel leaned inward slightly and that the roof was heavily cross-timbered.

"It looks safe," she thought aloud.

"It's safe enough," returned Dunke carelessly. "The place for cave-ins is at the head of the workings, before we get drifts timbered."

"Are we going into any of those places?"

"I wouldn't take you into any place that wasn't safe, Miss Margaret."

"Is it always so dreadfully warm down here?" she asked.

"You must remember we're somewhere around a thousand feet in the heart of the earth. Yes, it's always warm."

"I don't see how the men stand it and work."