Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile jaunt without baggage.

As I “raised the hill” overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen minutes of twelve.  I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in the bright moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of the village massed on and around the Wide West croppings.  My heart gave an exulting bound, and I said to myself, “They have made a new strike to-night—­and struck it richer than ever, no doubt.”  I started over there, but gave it up.  I said the “strick” would keep, and I had climbed hill enough for one night.  I went on down through the town, and as I was passing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come in and help her.  She said her husband had a fit.  I went in, and judged she was right—­he appeared to have a hundred of them, compressed into one.  Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making much of a success of it.  I ran up the street half a block or so and routed out a sleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four wrestled with the maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an hour, and the poor German woman did the crying.  He grew quiet, now, and the doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends.

It was a little after one o’clock.  As I entered the cabin door, tired but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting by the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his fingers, and looking pale, old, and haggard.  I halted, and looked at him.  He looked at me, stolidly.  I said: 

“Higbie, what—­what is it?”

“We’re ruined—­we didn’t do the work—­the blind LEAD’S relocated!”

It was enough.  I sat down sick, grieved—­broken-hearted, indeed.  A minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a pauper now, and very meek.  We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain and useless self-upbraidings, busy with “Why didn’t I do this, and why didn’t I do that,” but neither spoke a word.  Then we dropped into mutual explanations, and the mystery was cleared away.  It came out that Higbie had depended on me, as I had on him, and as both of us had on the foreman.  The folly of it!  It was the first time that ever staid and steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to chance or failed to be true to his full share of a responsibility.

But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was the first time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last.  He, also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon—­had ridden up on horseback, and looked through the window, and being in a hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through a broken pane.  Here it was, on the floor, where it had remained undisturbed for nine days: 

“Don’t fail to do the work before the ten days expire.  W. has passed through and given me notice.  I am to join him at Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night.  He says he will find it this time, sure.  Cal.”

“W.” meant Whiteman, of course.  That thrice accursed “cement!”