“I thought your goose was cooked when that blizzard hit us,” Winship was saying.

“Froze, you mean,” was Lee’s smiling reply.  “I thought so myself for a while.  We’ve hammered along, however.  To-night the last dirt goes out.”

“That was an idea now—­powder.”

“It was Carrigan’s, not mine.  It saved us.  The old man has forgotten more than I ever knew.  Here’s the banker now.”

The door swung open, admitting Menocal, blinking from the snow’s sheen.  He bade the sheriff and the engineer good day, glanced sharply at them and then at the others.  When his look encountered his son, his eyebrows went up.

“So you’re home finally,” he addressed him.  “After two weeks’ time!” His regard moved about from one to another of the trio.  “What does this mean, Charlie?  Who is that fellow wearing handcuffs?” He paused, staring steadily at his son.  “What have you been doing to bring you into Winship’s office?” As Charlie continued to sit silent, he turned to the sheriff.

“I’ll explain, Mr. Menocal, but what I have to say won’t be pleasant hearing for you,” Lee stated, at a nod from Winship.  “Take this chair, if you please.”

The banker sat down, heavily.  He sighed, while his fat cheeks shook with a slight tremble.

“What has he done?” he asked, with his eyes fixed on an ink-well on the sheriff’s desk.

Briefly and without temper Bryant related the circumstance of seeing Alvarez in Kennard one day during the previous summer, when the man appeared to be watching him.  Charlie was also in town on that day.  Alvarez was the man who had attempted to make the workmen drunk in camp on Christmas Eve, but he had escaped on that occasion.  He had stolen into camp again on the afternoon preceding the blizzard and two hours after sundown had been captured seeking to fire the commissary tent.  When made a prisoner, he had been searched.  On his person were found several checks for sums ranging from fifty to one hundred dollars.  Bryant drew the leather sack from his pocket, extracted the checks, and handed them to the banker.

“You see they are given by your son,” said he.  “I’ve questioned this Alvarez and he has finally admitted that he was employed by Charlie and instructed by him what to do.  Your son, therefore, is the instigator of the attempted crime, and Alvarez, an ignorant and brutal outlaw from Mexico, was merely his tool.  I pass over the matter of the whisky and the petty inconveniences earlier caused me and my men.  But here is an act of a different character, Mr. Menocal.  The man’s endeavour to fire our camp, had it been successful, would perhaps have resulted in the death of scores of men, as the storm broke shortly after and they would have been without shelter.”

Charlie Menocal sprang to his feet.

“Before God, I didn’t know he would choose that night!” he cried, passionately.  “I meant only to stop their work!”