“But you promised me you were not going to spoil him—­only it doesn’t matter; you can’t.”

Ormsby chuckled openly, and when she questioned “What?” he said: 

“I was just wondering what you would say if you knew what he is into now; if you could guess, for instance, that his backers have put up a cool hundred thousand to be used as he sees fit?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed; and there was dismay and sharp disappointment in her voice.  “You don’t mean that he is going to bribe these men?”

“No,” he said, relenting.  “As a matter of fact, I don’t know precisely what he is doing with the money, but I guess it is finding its way into legitimate channels.  I’ll make him give me an itemized expense account for your benefit when it’s all over, if you like.”

“It would be kinder to tell me more about it now,” she pleaded.

“No; I’ll let him have that pleasure, after the fact—­if we can get him pardoned out before you go back East.”

She was silent so long that he stole another sidewise look between his snubbings of the brake-pedal.  Her face was white and still, like the face of one suddenly frost-smitten, and he was instantly self-reproachful.

“Don’t look that way,” he begged.  “It hurts me; makes me feel how heavy my hand is when I’m doing my best to make it light.  He is trying a rather desperate experiment, to be sure, but he is in no immediate personal danger.  I believe it or I shouldn’t be here; I should be with him.”

She asked no more questions, being unwilling to tempt him to break confidence with Kent.  But she was thinking of all the desperate things a determined man with temperamental unbalancings might do when the touring car rolled noiselessly down the final hill into the single street of Megilp.

There was but one vehicle in the street at the moment; a freighter’s ore-wagon drawn by a team of mules, meekest and most shambling-prosaic of their tribe.  The motor-car was running on the spent velocity of the descent, and Ormsby thought to edge past without stopping.  But at the critical instant the mules gave way to terror, snatched the heavy wagon into the opposite plank walk, and tried to climb a near-by telephone pole.  Ormsby put his foot on the brake and something snapped under the car.

“What was that?” Elinor asked; and Ormsby got down to investigate.

“It is our brake connection,” he announced, after a brief inspection.  “And we are five good miles from Hudgins and his repair kit.”

A ring of town idlers was beginning to form about them.  An automobile was still enough of a rarity in the mining-camp to draw a crowd.

“Busted?” inquired one of the onlookers.

Ormsby nodded, and asked if there were a machinist in the camp.

“Yep,” said the spokesman; “up at the Blue Jay mine.”

“Somebody go after him,” suggested Ormsby, flipping a coin; and a boy started on a run.