“We didn’t want the nuisance of a prosecution,” said Fay, “because that would mean that these mossbacks could drag us off to Rapid City any old time as witnesses, and keep us there indefinitely.  Neither did we want to let them off scot-free.  They’d made us altogether too much trouble for that!  Bert here suggested a very simple way out.  I went down to Spanish Gulch and told the boys the whole story from start to finish.  Well, it isn’t hard to handle a Western crowd if you go at it right.  The boys always thought you had good stuff in you since you rode the horse and smashed Leary’s face that night.  It would have been easy to have cooked up all kinds of trouble for our precious gang, but I managed to get the boys in a frivolous mood, so they merely came up and had fun.”

“I should say they did!” Bert interjected.  “They dragged the crowd out of the shaft—­and they were a tough-looking proposition, I can tell you!—­and stood them up in a row.  They shaved half of Davidson’s head and half his beard, on opposite sides.  They left tufts of hair all over Arthur.  They made a six-pointed star on the top of Slayton’s crown.  Then they put the men’s clothes on wrong side before, and tied them facing the rear on three scrubby little burros.  Then the whole outfit was started toward Deadwood.  The boys took them as far as Blue Lead, where they delivered them over to the gang there, with instructions to pass them along.  They probably got to Deadwood.  I don’t know what’s become of them since.”

“I think it was cruel!” put in Miss Fay decidedly.

“Perhaps.  But it was better than hanging them.”

“What became of Mrs. Arthur?” asked the invalid.

“I shipped her to Deadwood with a little money.  Poor creature!  It would be a good thing for her if her husband never did show up.  She’d get along better without him.”

The claims located and the sharpers got rid of, Fay proceeded at once to put the assessment work under way.  In this, his long Western experience, and his intimate acquaintance with the men, stood him in such good stead that he was enabled to contract the work at a cheaper rate than Bishop’s estimate.

“I wrote to Bishop,” he said, “and told him all about it.  In his answer, which I’ll show you, he took all the blame to himself, just as I anticipated he would, and he’s so tickled to death over the showing made by the assays that he’s coming out here himself to see about development.  So I’m afraid you’re going to lose your job.”

“I’m not sorry to go home.  But I’m sorry to leave the Hills.”  He looked wistfully through the twilight toward Mary’s slender figure, outlined against the window.  The three men caught the glance, and began at once to talk in low tones to each other.  In a moment they went out.  Somehow, on returning from the land of visions, Ben found that the world had moved, and that one of the results of the movement was that many things were taken for granted by the little community of four who surrounded him.  It was as though the tangle had unravelled quietly while he slept.  She leaned toward him shyly, and whispered something to his ear.  He smiled contentedly.