On the second day after Ches’ arrival, Bud had come through with the mail, and before leaving, drew Jim aside, out of the boy’s hearing.

“The little feller’s yours agin all comers now, Jim,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Jim, surprised by the meaning in the tone.

“He’s yours,” repeated Bud. “That sweet-scented blossom that called himself the boy’s dad, filled his skin with red-eye farther up the line and settled the fuss he had with his dame.”

“Hurt her?”

“Man!” said Bud slowly, “he used a knife a foot long gave it to her a dozen times as hard as he could drive what’s your opinion?”

“Lord Almighty! Did he get away? But no, of course he couldn’t, being on the train ”

“He didn’t get away. The Con. wired the news to Kimballs. What was he to do when a small army of punchers boarded the train and took the prisoner? He couldn’t do nothing, and he never loved that black-muzzled whelp from the time he sassed him in the depot. The punchers took our friend out and tried him.”

“Tried him?”

“With a rope. In three minutes by; the watch he was found wanting your boy now, Jim, as I was telling you. Going to say anything to him about it?”

“Why,” said Jim, bewildered, “why, I don’t know, Bud guess not, just yet, on general principles. What do you think?”

“Think you’re right,” said Bud. “The poor little rooster couldn’t help but feel glad to hear the news, but it would sound kind of awful to hear a kid like that say he was glad two people were killed. Better wait till he’s been with you a while, Jim, and learned something different.”

Jim flushed at the implied compliment. “You’re right, Bud, I will.”

“Great little papoose, ain’t he?” said Bud, turning in his saddle before his starting rush. “Makings of a man there, all right. The boys in town are dead stuck on him. I’ll have to give a complete history when I get back. I must get a gait on, or I’ll have Uncle Sammy on my neck again inspector started out with me this morning.”

“The devil he did!” cried Jim indignantly, well knowing the hardships and dangers of the big rider’s route.

“Oh, it’s all right!” replied Bud with a wave of his hand. “Come out fine. When the lad first told me he’d been sent out to see why the mails was so late on this line, I told him I’d show him right on the spot, but he said there was no use getting hot about it, as he was only doing his duty, so I quieted down.

“He was a decent sort of feller. I thought to myself before we got under way, ’Now, there won’t nothing happen this day everything’ll go as smooth and slick as grease, and this feller will report that I’m sojering,’ that’s the way it usually works, you know. But this time I played in luck.

“Two miles out of town we ran into a wild-eyed gang from somewhere, who was going to make us dance. We didn’t dance, and I’ll say for that inspector that he stood by me like a man, but he was awful sick at his stomach later on from the excitement.

“Next thing, the bridge was down at Squaw Creek, and we swum her. He’d have gone down the flume, if I hadn’t got hold of his bridle. ’Nice mail route, this,’ says he, as he got ashore. ‘Oh, you’d like it,’ says I, ’if you got used to it.’ I’d begun to wonder what was next myself. Ain’t many people swimming Squaw Creek, as you perhaps know.

“Well, next was about ten mile along, just before you come to the old Tin-cup Camp. We was passing the bluff there, and all of a sudden, rip, thump, biff! Down comes what looked like the whole side a-top of us. It weren’t though. It was only a cinnamon had lost his balance, leaning over too far to see what we was. That bear landed right agin brother inspector’s horse, and brother inspector’s horse tried to climb a tree. Inspector himself fell a-top of the bear. I dassent shoot, for the devil himself couldn’t have told which was inspector and which bear. Finally bear shakes himself loose and telescopes himself up the canyon, the worst scared animile in the country. ’If you’ll ketch my horse, I’ll amble back again,’ says the inspector. ’I’ve investigated this route pretty thorough, and find it’s just as you say. Lamp-posts’ll do me all right for a while.’ Come out fine, didn’t it?

“Whish there! Untie yourself, you yaller bone-heap!” And the mail was a quarter of a mile up the trail.

Jim pondered the information concerning Ches carefully, only to adhere to his original determination. He could not see any way in which the boy would be benefited by hearing the news. Still, the miner hated anything that savored of concealment or deception.

“I wish Anne was here to help me,” he thought; “she’d know what to do.”

He sat long, looking down, his hands clasped about his knees, drinking with old Tantalus. But the reverie ended as it always did in action. There was nothing for it but the claim. Success there meant success everywhere.

It was the knowledge that Anne, the boy, and all he wished to do for both depended on the pay-streak which had urged him to such a fury of effort.

His carelessness of his own life, that led him to slap his timbering up any way, was born of that same fury. And the consequences came like most consequences, without a moment’s warning.

It was a still and beautiful noon. Ches had pulled out the last car before dinner, and started for the cabin.

A curious groaning and snapping from the tunnel halted him. It was the giving of the tortured timbers. On the heels of that came a dull, crushing roar. A blast of dust shot from the tunnel-mouth, like smoke from a cannon, preceded by a shock that nearly threw the boy off his feet.

Then all was still again. The sun shone as brilliantly as before, blazing down upon the ghastly face of a little boy, who, after one heart-broken cry of “Jim! Oh, Jim’s killed!” sank down upon the ground, chewing the fingers thrust in his mouth, that the pain might make the black wave keep its distance.

For Ches knew that he was alone; that there was no human being within miles to help the man caught in the hand of that mischance but himself, so frantically willing, but so impotent.

“I must git me wits tergedder I must!” and down came the teeth with all the strength of the boy’s jaw. “Oh, what will I do? What will I do?” The little head waved from side to side in its agony, and a sudden sob struck him in the throat.

After that one small weakness rose Ches Felton, hero. To the mouth of the tunnel he went. Above the tumbled pile of dirt and timber ran a sort of passage, between it and the roof.

A way along which a boy might crawl and find out if all the frames were down to which the silence of the tunnel gave a bitter assent or if by some most lucky chance one or two had held, and Jim be safe within.

Ches climbed to the top and thrust his head into the gloom. “Jim!” he called, “Jim!” No answer.

Before him lay the ruin of his pardner’s work. It was over this that his path lay, as deadly dangerous a path as could be found. The slightest disturbing of the roof above might bring down a thousand tons of dirt upon the one who ventured, slowly and hideously to crush his life out, there in the dark, beyond sight and sound of the cheerful world without. With this knowledge before him, and his inborn fear of the dark hole, as daunting as the hand of death itself, he took his soul in his gripe, and wormed his way within.

Sometimes his back grazed a stone in the roof, and the touch of white-hot iron could not have been so terrible; sometimes a falling stone near him would make his heart leap and stop as he waited for the hill above to follow. Foot by foot he made it, twisting around the end of a post, scooping out the dirt most cautiously where the hole was too small for even his slight body.

Once the sharp end of a broken piece of lagging caught in his clothes, and he could go neither forward nor back. There, for a second, he broke down. Bracing up again, he managed somehow to get the old knife out of his pocket and cut himself free.

He could see little.

A gray spectral light filtered in here and there that defined nothing, even when his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.

It was an endless journey. In places where the dirt closed in he would be a full minute progressing a foot, and a minute of such mortal terror as seldom falls to the lot of man of peace or soldier.

But it ended.

Suddenly the boy’s outstretched hand encountered only emptiness below. That frame had held. He dove into the space head first, and landed on something soft and warm the body of his pardner.

He had found him. In a paroxysm of joy, he flung himself upon the motionless figure and cried his heart out. This, too, he soon conquered. Jim had just so much show any delay might wipe it out. He searched the man’s pockets until he found a match. By its light he saw the candle stuck into the post, and lit it. Then he knelt beside his pardner again.

It was a curious picture within that gloomy chamber underground. The miner lying stark, stretched to his full great length, appearing enormous in the flickering candle-light, and the child, white-faced, big-eyed, but steady as a veteran, wiping the blood from the ragged cut in the man’s head.

Ches realized what had happened the instant before the calamity. Jim, startled by the noise of the yielding timbers, had made a rush, only to be struck down by the rock, that now lay within an inch of him; yet struck into safety for all that. Had he gone a yard farther, the life would have been smashed out of him instantly.

But now, what? The flowing blood sent a sickening chill through the boy. Had he done this much only to be able to see his pardner die? He drove his teeth into his hand again at the thought. What was that? Was it a trick of the tunnel, his heart sounding in his own ears, or a rhythmic beat from outside? Hollow and dull fell that “clatter-clum-clatter-clum.”

“Bud!” screamed Ches, “T’ank God, dat’s Bud!”

After half a dozen efforts he climbed the dirt pile and went back through the treacherous holes. The rider came so fast! “Oh!” groaned the boy, “I’ll never make it! Bud’ll t’ink we’re off somewheres an’ pull on! Bud! Bud!” he called at the top of his lungs; but the tunnel swallowed the little voice.

Desperation made him entirely reckless. It was any way to get out before the mail-man was beyond call. Glairy with sweat, he pulled, tugged, squirmed and wriggled along, until a dirty, small bundle rolled down almost under the mail-rider’s feet.

“Whoa!” shouted Bud with an astonished oath. “What’s the why boy, what’s the matter? Damn it! how you scart me!”

One look at him froze the man; he said no more, but waited, watching the working face of the child, who was mastering himself once more, in order to tell a quick, straight story, that no time might be lost.

“Der tunnel’s fell in, Bud; Jim’s in dere where der frame’s held. He’s livin’ yet, but he’s got a tur’ble cut in his head.”

The mail-rider drew out paper and tobacco, and rolled a cigarette. It was his method of biting his hand. He loved the man inside that dark blotch on the hill-side with an affection only known where men are few and strong. And because he loved him, Bud was going to keep his head cool and clear, to find the right thing to do and do it the right way.

For all his calm outer man the mind within was whirling. He turned to the tense little face before him for help, and with an admiration that knew no bounds.

“How far back?” he asked.

“T’ree frames was held dere was seven, ten foot apart how much is dat?”

“Forty feet ten foot apart! No wonder! Oh, Jim! How could you have been so careless?”

The boy’s shoulders shook once. “He worked like er horse now it’s all gone an’ he’s in dere ” The face was contorted out of all humanity, but he held the tears back.

Bud leaped from his horse. “Never you mind, Chessy lad!” he cried, hugging up the little figure, “we’ll get him out of that, by God! Could we haul him out the way you went?”

“No, dere ain’t room an’ if you touch dat roof hard ” he shuddered.

Bud sucked in his breath. “If you weren’t the sandy little man to try it!” he said. He stood a moment in silence going over it all.

“Ches,” he said, “there ain’t any time to lose. If Jim’s cut like that he may bleed to death in there when we could save him all right if we had him outside.

“There’s a party of miners down the road eight mile. They was having their grub as I went by. Chances are they’ll be there yet. They’ve got four men and a team. I could ride back, but I ought to be here working. Do you think you could stick on old Buck and ride there?”

“I kin.”

“By God! I hate to do it but there ain’t any other way!” The big man ground his teeth together. “I hate to do it damned if I’ll do it!”

Ches caught his hand. “I kin make it, Bud,” he pleaded; “I cuddent do nothin’ if I stayed here, an’ you could do a heap. Put me up and let me try.”

“All right,” said Bud. “The good Lord kept you from getting hurt in the tunnel, perhaps He’ll see you through again. Shut your eyes and hold on tight when you strike the high places, and don’t touch a rein leave it all to old Buck.”

He stepped forward and caught the horse by the bit.

“Buck!” he said, as though talking to a human being, “you and me have been through a heap together don’t fall down on me, now! Take the kid safe, old boy!” He caught Ches up and threw him across the saddle. “You’ll only have to tell ’em what’s happened the Lord send nothing happens to you! Good-by, you brave little devil we’ll win out yet. Go it, Buck!”

And while one of Jim’s friends plied pick and shovel like a mad man, the other was swaying on top of a galloping horse, gripping the pommel of the saddle with all the strength he had, and shutting his eyes when he came to the high places.

Captain Hanrahan’s party were miners of substance. They were working their way out to a new country to suit their inclinations. It had just been suggested that it was perhaps time to hit the trail again when the captain saw a figure on a horse flying athwart the mountain side the regular road was bad enough, but Bud had short cuts of his own, and Buck followed his usual way.

“Huh!” said the captain, “that man’s drunk or crazy?”

“Holy sufferin’!” gasped the man next him, as the yellow horse slipped on a turn and sent a shower of gravel a thousand feet below. “That was a near touch,” as the horse caught himself and swept on.

“Looks to me like a case of trouble, Cap,” said a third speaker. “That ain’t no man, anyhow it’s only a boy.”

“Horse running away with him, probably his folks ought to be clubbed for letting him out on such an animal. Well, spread out, boys, and we’ll catch him.”

But Buck stopped in two jumps, at Ches’ command of “Whoa!”

“Fren’s!” cried the boy, “me pardner’s caught in a tunnel dat caved in on him. Kin yer help us out? Three mile above Jones’s Hill.”

He had not finished the sentence before two men sprang for the horses. The rest grabbed picks and shovels and hurled them into the wagon.

“We’ll be there, hell-a-whooping,” said Captain Hanrahan.

“T’anks!” replied Ches weakly, and then the world went out. The captain caught him as he fell.

“Poor little cuss! He rid hard to help his pardner!” said the captain. “Hump yourselves, boys all ready! Got the whisky, Pete? Picks enough? Stick the axes where they won’t jump loose and cut a leg off some of us. Tie the horse behind good animal, that. All right, let ’em go!”

They went. Over stones and gulleys, the tools clanging and banging fit to leap from the wagon, the men clinging to the side-boards for dear life.

Down hill-sides like the slant of a roof, the horses keeping out of the way of the wagon; up the other side with the reeking animals straining every fiber; over bridges that bent fearfully beneath the shock of their onset; swaying around curves with the wheels sluing and sparks flying, and over the level as though the devil himself were behind them.

It was the record trip for eight miles in a wagon in that country. The driver stood up, a foot braced on either side, the reins thrown loose, the whip plied hard, and every urging that voice could give shrieked out by his powerful lungs.

It was like the rush of a fire-engine, plus twice the speed, and twenty times the danger. Above the pounding of hoofs, the din of rattling metal, the crash, smash and roar of the wheels and the yells of the driver could be heard the man Pete, ex-cowpuncher, cheerfully singing,

“Roll your tails, and roll ’em high,
We’ll all be angels by-and-by.”

Braced in the back corner sat Captain Hanrahan, his leg keeping some of the tools from going overboard, holding Ches in his arms.

“Curse it all, Billy!” he screamed to the driver, “miss some of them bumps, will you? I’ve got on a new pair of pants.”

“I’ll take ’em clean off you the next time, Cap!” retorted the driver.

They joked, which may seem heartless; but they risked their necks a hundred times, and that isn’t very heartless.

“That’s the place, I reckon, Cap!” said the driver, pointing. “Somebody working there now!”

“Give ’em a hoot!” replied the captain.

Bud stepped out and held up his hand in answer to the yell. The wave of thanksgiving at the sight of this most efficient help took all the stiffness out of the knees of the mail-rider. The tears rolled down his face unnoticed.

“You’re welcome, boys,” he cried, as the driver sawed the frenzied team to a standstill and the men sprang out.

“Reckon we are,” said the captain. “Now what’s up?”

“Is the boy hurt? Good God! He ain’t hurt himself, has he?”

“Naw; pore little cuss is used up, that’s all. He’ll be around all right in a minute. Now tell me, what’s loose.”

Bud answered briefly, but completely.

“Pete and Billy, get to cutting wood the rest of you come here,” commanded the captain.

“You ain’t going to stop to timber, are you?” asked Bud in an agony of haste.

“I sure am,” replied the captain. “All this trouble’s come of carelessness. Now you just keep your clothes on, and let me run this thing.

“We’ll have your friend out in no time, and there won’t be no more men stuck in there with a hill a-top of ’em in the doing of it. What you’ve done there is a help all right, but it might easy have meant that we’d had two men instead of one to hunt for.”

“You’re dead right,” said Bud. “Tell me what I’m to do.”

The captain took hold as only a man can who has the genius for it. He knew by long practice what size of a relief tunnel meant real speed of progress the least dirt to be removed to make it possible that men could work to advantage. And his tunnel, safely rough-ceiled, went in at the rate of a foot a minute.

When at last they pulled the insensible man out into the light of day, and found that while his wound, though severe, and if neglected mortal, was not likely to be dangerous with good attention, the captain said that he must be getting about his business.

“Oh, stay a little longer, fellers, till he comes to,” remonstrated Bud. “He’d like to have a chance to say ‘Thank you.’”

“Bugs!” replied the captain. “You tell him he owes us a drink, and as a particular favor to me, please not to put his frames over four foot apart in that ground.

“We’re likely to be back here shortly, anyhow, because I think your friend has got hold of the right idea from what you tell me of his plans; but it’ll take more’n one man to really prospect it. If we don’t hit it where we’re going, we’ll sure come back.”

“Well, boys, I can thank you and I’m going to,” said Bud. “That man is my friend, and if you hadn’t come as you did ”

“Say, let go,” interrupted the captain. “You’d have done the same thing if you’d been us, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” admitted Bud reluctantly.

“And you wouldn’t want to be thanked for it a white chip more’n we do,” concluded the captain. “If there’s any thanks coming it is to that little two-foot chunk of man yonder. Snaking over that fall was a thing to put a crimp in anybody. You was bound to help your pardner, wasn’t you, son?”

The boy looked up into the captain’s eagle face. “I’d ’er got to Jim,” he answered simply, “’f I’d had ter chew me way in like a rat.”

The captain stepped back and looked at him.

“By the Lord!” he said slowly, “I believe you would!” A change came over the thin, arrogant face. He stooped suddenly, raised the boy and kissed him. “Now, get out o’ this!” he roared at the driver, as he leaped into the wagon.

They waved their hands as long as the miners were in sight, and stood staring until Pete’s statement that they’d all be angels by-and-by was lost in the distance.

“Pretty good folks when you’re in trouble, ain’t they, Ches?” said Bud.

“What ’ud we have done, if dey hadn’t come? Ain’t it ‘mos’ time Jim was moving, Bud?”

“I’ll give him another spoonful of whisky, but you can’t expect him to start right up and hop around. He got an awful crack, boy.”

For all that, as the dose of strong liquor went down Jim’s throat, he opened his eyes.

“Hello, Bud! Hello, Ches!” he said wonderingly. “Have I been asleep? Why, what the devil’s the matter with my head?” he raised his hand to the spruce-gum bandage. “Phew! But I feel weak!” he sighed as his hand dropped. “Something’s happened what is it?”

There, with a friend on each side holding a hand, they told him the story. It was a sacred reunion.

The gratitude of the man saved, and the protestations of the others that they would have done all they did a thousand times again would only seem childish in repetition. They cried, too, which is excusable in a child, but not in two big men. Men don’t cry. It is the monopoly of women. Nevertheless, Bud and Jim and Ches cried and swore, and shook hands and cried again until it was a pitiful thing to see.

“Well,” said Bud at last, “this makes you feel better, but it won’t get the work done. I’ve got to go out and fix old Buck and get in some firewood.”

“Oh, I’ll do that!” cried Jim, raising himself on his elbow.

“You?” jeered Bud. “You look like it! Now, you lie right down there and get well that’s your play. It would make us feel as if we’d wasted our time if we had to turn to and bury you after all the trouble we’ve had. You’re good for two weeks in that bunk, old horse.”

“Two weeks! I can’t, Bud; I can’t! I must get up before that!”

“You lie down there hear me?”

“But I’ll have to see to things around you can’t stay.”

“I stay right here till you’re well.”

“But the mail?”

“The devil take the mail or anybody else that wants the job. Uncle Sammy won’t hop on to my collar button, because of the fine send-off my friend the inspector’ll give. And somebody will get orry-eyed up in town, and come down to find what’s loose. He’ll take the bags then. It’s all settled.”

“But there are other things ”

“Let ’em rest. Now I’m off to do the chores oh, say, speaking of mail, here’s a letter for you I forgot all about in the excitement here you go. Come along, Ches, and help me carry wood.”

The miner looked at the letter in his hand, and a tinge of blood crept into his white cheeks, then ebbed, leaving them whiter than before.

Suppose there were other men who wanted her; men with money, learning, wit and influence. Was this bitterest of blows to fall upon him when he was already down? He looked at his hands, green from loss of blood. “I tried,” he muttered, “I tried.”

Still the very touch of the paper seemed to have something warm and heartening in it. It was from her, anyhow. With sudden strength he tore it open and read:

Dearest, Dearest Jim I yield the whole case. You are right.

It is to my shame that clear-sightedness came from no source within
me, but from a brave example set.

My little cousin married the man she loved last week, and, of
course, Miss Anne was a high functionary.

Oh, what a stirring there was in me, Jim, watching them and thinking
of you!

They will be as poor as church mice, but they do not care, and
theirs is the wise economy.

Life is too short to waste, Jim, I see it now. I put it all in your
hands, dearest; if you can not come to me, I shall come to you.

I believe I’m only lukewarm by habit, not by nature.

I wish I could tell you how sorry I am for the time I have squandered.

I’ll show you, that will be better.

Any time, or any place and no conditions now, Jim. That’s all, my
dear brave lover. Good night.

Your own, Anne.

He was sitting bolt upright. Once more he devoured the letter. Then he sank back and closed his eyes.

“Thank you, my darling, I can rest now,” he said.

The golden sunset light played in riotous joyousness on the cabin walls; the little creek laughed out loud; so did Ches and Bud, approaching the cabin. It was a beautiful and happy world.