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Rosa, who had been listening, understood his mood much better than the men, and with her small hands upon his arm she pleaded: “Take me with you! I hate these people–I want to go with you.”

He turned a tender, pitying, almost paternal glance upon her. “No, girl, no. I can’t do that. You’re too young. It wouldn’t be right to snarl a grown woman’s life up with mine–much less a child like you.” Then, as if to soften the effect of his irrevocable decision, he added: “Perhaps some time we’ll meet again. But it’s good-by now.” He put his arm about her and drew her to his side and patted her shoulder as if she were a lad. Then he turned. “Lend me a dollar, Judge! I’m anxious to ride.”

The judge looked troubled. “We’re sorry, Ed–but if you feel that way, why–“

“That’s the way I feel,” answered the trailer, and his tone was conclusive.

* * * * *

Dusk was falling when, mounted on his horse, with his “stake” in his pocket, Kelley rode out of the stable into the street swarming with excited men. The opposition had regained its courage. Yells of vengeance rose: “Lynch him! Lynch the dog!” was the cry.

Reining his bronco into the middle of the road, with rifle across the pommel of his saddle, Kelley advanced upon the crowd, in the shadowy fringes of which he could see ropes swinging in the hands of Mink’s drunken partisans.

“Come on, you devils!” he called. “Throw a rope if you dare.”

Awed by the sheer bravery of the challenge, the crowd slowly gave way before him.

The block seemed a mile long to Kelley, but he rode it at a walk, his horse finding his own way, until at last he reached the bridge which led to the high-line Red Mountain road. Here he paused, faced about, and sheathed his Winchester, then with a wave of his hand toward Rosa Lemont, who had followed him thus far, he called out:

“Good-by, girl! You’re the only thing worth saving in the whole dern town. Adios!”

And, defeated for the first time in his life, Tall Ed turned his cayuse’s head to the San McGill range, with only the memory of a worshipful child-woman’s face to soften the effect of his hard experience as the Marshal of Brimstone Basin.

PARTNERS FOR A DAY

I

Cinnebar was filled with those who took chances. The tenderfoot staked his claim on the chance of selling it again. The prospector toiled in his overland tunnel on the chance of cracking the apex of a vein. The small companies sank shafts on the chance of touching pay ore, the big companies tunneled deep and drifted wide in the hope of cutting several veins. The merchants built in the belief that the camp was a permanent town, and the gamblers took chances of losing money if their game was honest, and put their lives at hazard if they cheated.

Only the saloon-keepers took no chances whatever. They played the safe game. They rejoiced in a certainty, for if the miners had good luck they drank to celebrate it, and if they had bad luck they drank to forget it–and so the liquor-dealers prospered.

Tall Ed Kelley, on his long trip across “the big flat,” as he called the valley between the Continental Divide and the Cascade Range, stopped at Cinnebar to see what was going on. In less than three days he sold his horse and saddle and took a chance on a leased mine. At the end of a year he was half owner in a tunnel that was yielding a fair grade of ore and promised to pay, but he was not content. A year in one place was a long time for him, and he was already meditating a sale of his interest in order that he might take up the line of his march toward the Northwest, when a curious experience came to him.