“Go on,” said MacDonald curtly to the others.  “I’ll keep the notes safe up here, and give Sheriff Flood a hand at the hoist!”

All had gone well, exceedingly well, in the examination of the mine.  It had begun sharp at twelve o’clock when the day shift came out with their dinner pails.  It will be remembered the Ridge sloped down to a burnt area, known as the Brule, overgrown with young poplars and birches and yet younger pines.  The Brule slanted down to a roll of rock and shingle and gravel above the City known as Coal Hill.  It was on the face of this hill that the mines lay.  You could see the black veins coming out on the face of the cliff; and into the cliff penetrated two parallel tunnels.  Up and down from these tunnels rattled the trucks on serial tramways to and from the Smelter, weaving in and out of the tunnel mouths like shuttles, run by gravitation pressure.  If the mines were worthless, or worth only the five, ten, and three-hundred dollars that the Ring had paid the “dummy” homesteaders for each quarter section, these shifts of a hundred men at a time, and trucks and tramways would have offered a puzzle to any one but the downy-lipped youth, who had come to examine them.

When Wayland arrived at the mine with Matthews and MacDonald, he found the federal investigator on hand with Mr. Bat Brydges, who was out for news features, and the news editor of the “Smelter City Herald,” who somehow gave the Ranger a look mingled of smothered anger and friendliness.  If Mr. Bat Brydges felt any embarrassment, he did not show it.  Indeed, the handy man would have felt proud of the very things of which he had accused the Ranger; and it is to be doubted if the door of decent shame remained open; if, indeed, the harboring of thoughts like the flocking of the carrion bird to putridity does not pre-suppose a kind of inner death.  And as the party were donning blue overalls to descend into the mine, who should come on the scene but Mr. Sheriff Flood, “to see that ev’thing waz al’ right,” he explained, exhibiting a protuberant rotundity due reverse of the compass that had been most prominent when Wayland last saw him; and if the doughty defender of the law felt any embarrassment, like the handy man, he did not show it.  Indeed, this mighty man of valor could truthfully be described as fat of brain, fat of chops, fat of neck, and fattest of all in the rotundity of this strutting stomach.  In fact, he seemed proud of that hummocky part of his anatomy and swung it round at you and rested his hands clasped across it as he talked.

“Jis’ thought I’d happen along!  Wife didn’t want me to:  women are all skeery that way; but I jis’ thought I’d happen along an’ nut let her know!”

“All sorts o’ things might chance in a mine, mightn’t they?” cut in Matthews with a twinkle of his eye more merry than good natured.

The Sheriff smiled a sickly smile and ‘’lowed they could’; and everybody walked into the lowest tunnel leaving the fire guard lanterns outside; for this tunnel was lighted by electricity.  As they all walked in, the Sheriff was to the rear.