“Tell me.”

“Can’t you guess, Jack?”

“I’m not a mind reader.”

“The cad,” said Donnegan through his teeth.

“It’s the old reason.”

“Money?”

“Yes.”

A shadow swept across the side of the tent; it was Landis waving his arm carelessly.

“If that’s all, I can fix you up and send you back with enough to carry the colonel along.  Look here—­why, I have five hundred with me.  Take it, Lou.  There’s more behind it, but the colonel mustn’t think that there’s as much money in the mines as people say.  No idea how much living costs up here.  Heavens, no!  And the prices for labor!  And then they shirk the job from dawn to dark.  I have to watch ’em every minute, I tell you!”

He sighed noisily.

“But the end of it is, dear”—­how that small word tore into the heart of Donnegan, who crouched outside—­“that you must go back tomorrow morning.  I’d send you tonight, if I could.  As a matter of fact, I don’t trust the red-haired rat who—­”

The girl interrupted while Donnegan still had control of his hair-trigger temper.

“You forget, Jack.  Father sent me here, but he did not tell me to come back.”

At this Jack Landis burst into an enormous laughter.

“You don’t mean, Lou, that you actually intend to stay on?”

“What else can I mean?”

“Of course it makes it awkward if the colonel didn’t expressly tell you just what to do.  I suppose he left it to my discretion, and I decide definitely that you must go back at once.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Lou, don’t you hear me saying that I’ll take the responsibility?  If your father blames you let him tell me—­”

He broke down in the middle of his sentence and another of those uncomfortable little pauses ensued.  Donnegan knew that their eyes were miserably upon each other; the man tongue-tied by his guilt; the girl wretchedly guessing at the things which lay behind her fiance’s words.

“I’m sorry you don’t want me here.”

“It isn’t that, but—­”

He apparently expected to be interrupted, but she waited coolly for him to finish the sentence, and, of course, he could not.  After all, for a helpless girl she had a devilish effective way of muzzling Landis.  Donnegan chuckled softly in admiration.

All at once she broke through the scene; her voice did not rise or harden, but it was filled with finality, as though she were weary of the interview.

“I’m tired out; it’s been a hard ride, Jack.  You go home now and look me up again any time tomorrow.”

“I—­Lou—­I feel mighty bad about having you up here in this infernal tent, when the camp is full, and—­“: 

“You can’t lie across the entrance to my tent and guard me, Jack.  Besides, I don’t need you for that.  The man who’s with me will protect me.”

“He doesn’t look capable of protecting a cat!”