"I can't offer you more 'n a half-interest in the 'lay.' That's all I own."

"Is dis claim so reech lak people say?" 'Poleon inquired. "Dey're tellin' me you goin' mak' hondred t'ousan' dollar."

"We're just breastin' out--cross-cuttin' the streak, but--looky."

Jerry removed a baking-powder can from the window-shelf and out of it he poured a considerable amount of coa.r.s.e gold which the visitors examined with intense interest. "Them's our pannin's."

"How splendid!" Rouletta cried.

"I been clamorin' to hire some men and take life easy. I say put on a gang and h'ist it out, but"--Jerry shot a glance at his partner--"people tell me I'm vi'lent an' headstrong. They say, 'Prove it up.'"

Linton interrupted by loudly exclaiming, "Come and get it, strangers, or I'll throw it out and wash the skillet."

Supper was welcome, but, despite the diners' preoccupation with it, despite Tom's and Jerry's effort to conceal the fact of their estrangement, it became evident that something was amiss. Rouletta finally sat back and, with an accusing glance, demanded to know what was the matter.

The old men met her eyes with an a.s.sumption of blank astonishment.

"'Fess up," she persisted. "Have you boys been quarreling again?"

"Who? Us? Why, not exactly--"

"We sort of had words, mebbe."

"What about?"

There was an awkward, an ominous silence. "That," Mr. Linton said, in a harsh and firm voice, "is something I can't discuss. It's a personal matter." "It ain't personal with me," Jerry announced, carelessly. "We was talkin' about Tom's married life and I happened to say--"

"DON'T!" Linton's cry of warning held a threat. "Don't spill your indecencies in the presence of this child or--I'll hang the frying-pan around your neck. The truth is," he told Letty, "there's no use trying to live with a horn' toad. I've done my best. I've let him defame me to my face and degrade me before strangers, but he remains hostyle to every impulse in my being; he picks and pesters and poisons me a thousand times a day. And snore! My G.o.d! You ought to hear him at night."

Strangely enough, Mr. Quirk did not react to this pa.s.sionate outburst. On the contrary, he bore it with indications of a deep and genuine satisfaction.

"He's workin' up steam to propose another divorce," said the object of Tom's tirade.

"That I am. Divorce is the word," Linton growled.

"WHOOP-EE!" Jerry uttered a high-pitched shout. "I been waitin'

for that. I wanted him to say it. Now I'm free as air and twice as light. You heard him propose it, didn't you?"

"Wat you goin' do 'bout dis lay?" Toleon inquired.

"Split her," yelled Jerry.

"Dis cabin, too?"

"Sure. Slam a part.i.tion right through her."

"We won't slam no part.i.tion anywhere," Tom declared. "Think I'm going to lay awake every night listening to distant bugles? No.

We'll pull her apart, limb from limb, and divvy the logs. It's a pest-house, anyhow. I'll burn my share."

Tom's positive refusal even to permit mention of the cause of the quarrel rendered efforts at a reconciliation difficult; 'Poleon's and Rouletta's attempts at badinage, therefore, were weak failures, and their conversation met with only the barest politeness. Now that the truth had escaped, neither partner could bring himself to a serious consideration of anything except his own injuries. They exchanged evil glances, they came into direct verbal contact only seldom, and when they did it was to clash as flint upon steel. No statement of the one was sufficiently conservative, sufficiently broad, to escape a sneer and an immediate refutation from the other. Evidently the rift was deep and was widening rapidly.

Of course the facts were revealed eventually--Rouletta had a way of winning confidences, a subtle, sweet persuasiveness--they had to do with the former Mrs. Linton, that shadowy female figure which had fallen athwart Tom's early life. It seemed that Jerry had referred to her as a "h.e.l.lion."

Now the injured husband himself had often applied even more disparaging terms to the lady in question, therefore the visitors were puzzled at his show of rabid resentment; the most they could make out of it was that he claimed the right of disparagement as a personal and exclusive privilege, and considered detraction out of the lips of another a trespa.s.s upon his intimate private affairs, an aspersion and an insult. The wife of a man's bosom, he averred, was sacred; any creature who breathed disrespect of her into the ears of her husband was lower than a hole in the ground and lacked the first qualifications of a friend, a gentleman, or a citizen.

Jerry, on the other hand, would not look at the matter in this light. Tom had called the woman a "h.e.l.lion," therefore he was privileged to do the same, and any denial of that privilege was an iniquitous encroachment upon HIS sacred rights. Those rights he proposed to safeguard, to fight for if necessary. He would shed his last drop of blood in their defense. No cantankerous old grouch could refuse him free speech and get away with it.

"You're not really mad at each other," Rouletta told them.

"AIN'T we?" they hoa.r.s.ely chorused.

She shook her head. "You need a change, that's all. As a matter of fact, your devotion to each other is about the most beautiful, the most touching, thing I know. You'd lay down your lives for each other; you're like man and wife, and well you know it."

"Who? US?" Jerry was aghast. "Which one of us is the woman? I been insulted by experts, but none of 'em ever called me 'Mrs. Linton.'

She was a tough customer, a regular h.e.l.lion--"

"He's off again!" Tom growled. "Me lay down MY life for a squawking parrot! He'll repeat that pet word for the rest of time if I don't wring his neck."

"Mebbe so you lak hear 'bout some other feller's trouble," 'Poleon broke in, diplomatically.

"Wal, ma soeur she's come to you for help, queeck."

Both old men became instantly alert. "You in trouble?" Tom demanded of the girl. "Who's been hurting you, I'd like to know?"

Jerry, too, leaned forward, and into his widening eyes came a stormy look. "Sure! Has one of them crawlin' worms got fresh with you, Letty? Say--!" He reached up and removed his six-shooter from its nail over his bed.

Rouletta set them upon the right track. Swiftly but earnestly she recited the nature and the circ.u.mstances of the misfortune that had overtaken Pierce Phillips, and of the fruitless efforts his friends were making in his behalf. She concluded by asking her hearers to go his bail.

"Why, sure!" Linton exclaimed, with manifest relief. "That's easy.

I'll go it, if they'll take me."

"There you are, hoggin' the curtain, as usual," Jerry protested.

"I'll go his bail myself. I got him in trouble at Sheep Camp. I owe him--"

"I've known the boy longer than you have. Besides, I'm a family man; I know the anguish of a parent's heart--"

"Lay off that 'family' stuff," howled Mr. Quirk. "You know it riles me. I could of had as much of a family as you had if I'd wanted to. You'd think it give you some sort of privilege. Why, ever since we set up with Letty you've a.s.sumed a fatherly air even to her, and you act like I was a plumb outsider. You remind me of a hen--settin' on every loose door-k.n.o.b you find."

"If you'd lay off the 'family' subject we'd get along better."

Once again the fray was on; it raged intermittently throughout the evening; it did not die out until bedtime put an end to it.

Rouletta and her three companions were late in reaching town on the following day, for they awakened to find a storm raging, and in consequence the trails were heavy. Out of this white smother they plodded just as the lights of Dawson were beginning to gleam.

Leaving the men at the Barracks, the girl proceeded to her hotel.

She had changed out of her trail clothes and was upon the point of hurrying down-town to her work when she encountered Hilda Courteau.

"Where in the world have you been?" the latter inquired.

"Nowhere, in the world," Rouletta smiled. "I've been quite out of it." Then she told of her and 'Poleon's trip to the mines and of their success. "Pierce will be at liberty inside of an hour," she declared.