He opened his shirt and felt himself, front and back, on his left side.
"Went clean through, and no harm done!" he cried jubilantly. "I'll bet he

aimed right all right, but he drew the gun over when he pulled the
trigger--the cuss! But I fixed 'm! Oh, I fixed 'm!"

His fingers were investigating the bullet-hole in his side, and a shade of
regret passed over his face. "It's goin' to be stiffer'n hell," he said. "An'

it's up to me to get mended an' get out o' here."
He crawled out of the hole and went down the hill to his camp. Half an hour

later he returned, leading his pack-horse. His open shirt disclosed the rude
bandages with which he had dressed his wound. He was slow and awkward with his

left-hand movements, but that did not prevent his using the arm.
The bight of the pack-rope under the dead man's shoulders enabled him to heave

the body out of the hole. Then he set to work gathering up his gold. He worked
steadily for several hours, pausing often to rest his stiffening shoulder and

to exclaim:
"He shot me in the back, the measly skunk! He shot me in the back!"

When his treasure was guise cleaned up and wrapped securely into a number of
blanket-covered parcels, he made an estimate of its value.

"Four hundred pounds, or I'm a Hottentot," he concluded. "Say two hundred in
quartz an' dirt--that leaves two hundred pounds of gold. Bill! Wake up! Two

hundred pounds of gold! Forty thousand dollars! An' it's yourn--all yourn!"
He scratched his head delightedly and his fingers blundered into an unfamiliar

groove. They quested along it for several inches. It was a crease through his
scalp where the second bullet had ploughed.

He walked angrily over to the dead man.
"You would, would you?" he bullied. "You would, eh? Well, I fixed you good an'

plenty, an' I'll give you decent burial, too. That's more'n you'd have done
for me."

He dragged the body to the edge of the hole and toppled it in. It struck the
bottom with a dull crash, on its side, the face twisted up to the light. The

miner peered down at it.
"An' you shot me in the back!" he said accusingly.

With pick and shovel he filled the hole. Then he loaded the gold on his horse.
It was too great a load for the animal, and when he had gained his camp he

transferred part of it to his saddle-horse. Even so, he was compelled to
abandon a portion of his outfit--pick and shovel and gold-pan, extra food and

cooking utensils, and divers odds and ends.
The sun was at the zenith when the man forced the horses at the screen of

vines and creepers. To climb the huge boulders the animals were compelled to
uprear and struggle blindly through the tangled mass of vegetation. Once the

saddle-horse fell heavily and the man removed the pack to get the animal on
its feet. After it started on its way again the man thrust his head out from

among the leaves and peered up at the hillside.
"The measly skunk!" he said, and disappeared.

There was a ripping and tearing of vines and boughs. The trees surged back and
forth, marking the passage of the animals through the midst of them. There was

a clashing of steel-shod hoofs on stone, and now and again an oath or a sharp
cry of command. Then the voice of the man was raised in song:--

"Tu'n around an' tu'n yo' face
Untoe them sweet hills of grace

(D' pow'rs of sin yo' am scornin'!).
Look about an, look aroun',

Fling yo' sin-pack on d' groun'
(Yo' will meet wid d' Lord in d' mornin'!)."

The song grew faint and fainter, and through the silence crept back the spirit
of the place. The stream once more drowsed and whispered; the hum of the

mountain bees rose sleepily. Down through the perfume-weighted air fluttered
the snowy fluffs of the cottonwoods. The butterflies drifted in and out among

the trees, and over all blazed the quiet sunshine. Only remained the
hoof-marks in the meadow and the torn hillside to mark the boisterous trail of

the life that had broken the peace of the place and passed on.
PLANCHETTE

"IT is my right to know," the girl said.
Her voice was firm-fibred with determination. There was no hint of pleading in

it, yet it was the determination that is reached through a long period of
pleading. But in her case it had been pleading, not of speech, but of

personality. Her lips had been ever mute, but her face and eyes, and the very
attitude of her soul, had been for a long time eloquent with questioning. This

the man had known, but he had never answered; and now she was demanding by the
spoken word that he answer.

"It is my right," the girl repeated.
"I know it," he answered, desperately" target="_blank" title="ad.绝望地；拼命地">desperately and helplessly.

She waited, in the silence which followed, her eyes fixed upon the light that
filtered down through the lofty boughs and bathed the great redwood trunks in

mellow warmth. This light, subdued and colored, seemed almost a radiation from
the trunks themselves, so strongly did they saturate it with their hue. The

girl saw without seeing, as she heard, without hearing, the deep gurgling of
the stream far below on the canyon bottom.

She looked down at the man. "Well?" she asked, with the firmness which feigns
belief that obedience will be forthcoming.

She was sitting upright, her back against a fallen tree-trunk, while he lay
near to her, on his side, an elbow on the ground and the hand supporting his

head.
"Dear, dear Lute," he murmured.

She shivered at the sound of his voice--not from repulsion, but from struggle
against the fascination of its caressing gentleness. She had come to know well

the lure of the man--the wealth of easement and rest that was promised by
every caressing intonation of his voice, by the mere touch of hand on hand or

the faint impact of his breath on neck or cheek. The man could not express
himself by word nor look nor touch without weaving into the expression, subtly

and occultly, the feeling as of a hand that passed and that in passing stroked
softly and soothingly. Nor was this all-pervading caress a something that

cloyed with too great sweetness; nor was it sicklysentimental; nor was it
maudlin with love's madness. It was vigorous, compelling, masculine. For that

matter, it was largely unconscious on the man's part. He was only dimly aware
of it. It was a part of him, the breath of his soul as it were, involuntary

and unpremeditated.
But now, resolved and desperate, she steeled herself against him. He tried to

face her, but her gray eyes looked out to him, steadily, from under cool,
level brows, and he dropped his head upon her knee. Her hand strayed into his

hair softly, and her face melted into solicitude and tenderness. But when he
looked up again, her gray eyes were steady, her brows cool and level.

"What more can I tell you?" the man said. He raised his head and met her gaze.
"I cannot marry you. I cannot marry any woman. I love you--you know

that--better than my own life. I weigh you in the scales against all the dear
things of living, and you outweigh everything. I would give everything to

possess you, yet I may not. I cannot marry you. I can never marry you."
Her lips were compressed with the effort of control. His head was sinking back

to her knee, when she checked him.
"You are already married, Chris?"

"No! no!" he cried vehemently. "I have never been married. I want to marry
only you, and I cannot!"

"Then--"
"Don't!" he interrupted. "Don't ask me!"

"It is my right to know," she repeated.
"I know it," he again interrupted. "But I cannot tell you."

"You have not considered me, Chris," she went on gently.
"I know, I know," he broke in.

"You cannot have considered me. You do not know what I have to bear from my
people because of you."

"I did not think they felt so very unkindly toward me," he said bitterly.
"It is true. They can scarcely tolerate you. They do not show it to you, but

they almost hate you. It is I who have had to bear all this. It was not always
so, though. They liked you at first as . . . as I liked you. But that was four

years ago. The time passed by--a year, two years; and then they began to turn
against you. They are not to be blamed. You spoke no word. They felt that you