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HARVARD
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LIBRARY








BLACK GOLD
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE





BLACK GOLD
BY
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
AUTHOR OF "BUFF: A COLLIE,” "BRUCE,"
"LAD: A DOG," ETC.
NEW
YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


FOREWORD
If you are questing for character-study or for real-
ism or for true literature in any of its forms,-then
walk around this book of mine (and, indeed, any book
of mine); for it was not written for you and it will
have no appeal for you.
But if you care for a yarn with lots of action, some
of it pretty exciting, you may like "BLACK GOLD."
I think you will.
It has all the grand old tricks: from the Weirdly
Vanishing Footprints, to the venerable Ride for Life.
Yes, and it embalms even the half-forgotten and long-
disused Struggle on the Cliff. Its Hero is a hero. Its
Villain is a villain. Nobody could possibly mistake
either of them for the Friend of the Family. The
Heroine is just a heroine; not a human. There is not
a subtle phrase or a disturbingly new thought, from
start to finish.
There is a good mystery, too; along lines which have
not been worked over-often. And there is a glimpse
of Untold Treasure. What better can you ask; in
a story that is frank melodrama?
The scene, by the way, is laid in Northern Califor-
nia; a beautiful and strikingly individualistic region
which, for the most part, is ignored by tourists for the


vi
FOREWORD
man-made scenic effects and playgrounds of the south-
ern counties of the State.
If, now and again, my puppets or my plot-wires
creak a bit noisily,—what then? Creaking, at worst,
is a sure indication of movement,-of action-of in-
cessant progress of sorts. A thing that creaks is not
standing still and gathering mildew. It moves. Other-
wise it could not creak.
Yes, there are worse faults to a plot than an occa-
sional tendency to creakiness. It means, for one thing,
that numberless skippable pages are not consumed in
photographic description of the ill-assorted furnishings
of the heroine's room or cosmos; nor in setting forth
the myriad phases of thought undergone by the hero in
seeking to check the sway of his pet complexes. (This
drearily flippant slur on realism springs from pure
envy. I should rejoice to write such a book. But I
can't. And, if I could, I know I should never be able
to stay awake long enough to correct its proofs.)
Yet, there is something to be said in behalf of the
man or woman who finds guilty joy in reading a story
whose action gallops; a story whose runaway pace
breaks its stride only to leap a chasm or for a breath-
catching stumble on a precipice-edge. The office boy
prefers Captain Kidd to Strindberg; not because he
is a boy, but because he is human and has not yet
learned the trick of disingenuousness. He is still
normal. So is the average grown-up.
These normal and excitement-loving readers are
overwhelmingly in the majority. Witness the fact
that “The Bat” had a longer run in New York than


FOREWORD
vii
have all of Dunsany's and Yeats's rare dramas, put to-
gether. If we insist that our country be guided by ma-
jority-rule, then why sneer at a majority-report in
literary tastes ?
"Ben Hur” was branded as “a religious dime novel.”
Yet it has had fifty times the general vogue of Anatole
France's exquisite pseudo-blasphemy which deals with
the same period. Public taste is not always, necessa-
rily, bad taste. “The common people heard Him,
gladly." (The Scribes did not.)
After all, there is nothing especially debasing in a
taste for yarns which drip with mystery and suspense
and ceaseless action; even if the style and concept of
these yarns be grossly lacking in certain approved ele-
ments. So the tale be written with strong evidence
of sincerity and with a dash of enthusiasm, why grudge
it a small place of its own in readers' hours of mental
laziness?
With this shambling apology,—which, really, is no
apology at all,—I lay my book on your knees. You
may like it or you may not. You will find it alive
with flaws. But, it is alive.
I don't think it will bore you. Perhaps there are
worse recommendations.
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE.
"Sunnybank”
Pompton Lakes,
New Jersey.





BLACK GOLD





BLACK GOLD
CHAPTER ONE
THE man awoke-uncomfortably aware of two
I things. First, that he had been asleep by broad
daylight and when he should have been alertly on duty.
Second, that some overwhelming danger menaced him.
The roused sleeper was Toni, the Basco sheep
herder of the Gale-O’Rell ranch. He was a surly
giant; a product of the Pyrenees regions; and sourly
discontented with everything in America ;-most dis-
contented of all with his Yankee employers and with
his task of keeping their sheep from straying.
Toni, awakened by some occult sixth sense, lay quite
still. His head was resting on a stone in the far corner
of the Gale-O’Rell Number Three sheep range. His
body was sprawled supine on the ground.
He could see the bunch of sheep,--some two
thousand in all,—grazing stolidly here and there,
athwart the rolling pasture; and, on a knoll a furlong
away, squatted Zit, the little black collie that was their
official guard and guide.
No, Toni had not been startled from sleep by any
stampede or by the dog's barking. He realized that.
Yet, as his senses gradually sharpened to complete


12
BLACK GOLD
wakefulness, he was more and more impressed by the
feeling of peril.
His arm felt heavy, across his chest; and instinctively
he made as though to move it. Then he felt that both
his arms were pillowing his tousled head from the
hardness of the stone beneath. And he glanced down
at his breast, to see what weight was on it.
His drowsy glance froze into a stare of stark horror.
There, coiled lazily on the man's bare and hairy
upper chest, lay a five-foot rattlesnake.
The reptile had crawled thither, presumably, for
warmth against the chilly breeze of the early spring
day. Though Toni's muscles remained rigidly move-
less in the first terror of his discovery, yet some tens-
ing of sinews or some involuntary catch of his breath
must have jarred the reptile.
For, lifting its fleshless three-cornered head from
among its glossy folds, the snake set up a growingly
sharp whirr of its rattles.
Toni was sick with fright. He shut his eyes, to
blot out the fearsome spectacle of sudden death; and
an unconquerable tremor convulsed him.
Again, at this faint movement, the snake whirred
its warning rattle. And, to the Basco's added horror,
the rattle was answered from somewhere on the ground
within six inches of his ear. Toni understood. Within
striking distance of him was not only the snake on
his chest, but the creature's mate.
Toni forced his shuddering body to deadly moveless-
ness. He tried to pray to his saints. But long absti-
nence from prayer had rusted his memory for such


BLACK GOLD
13
things. He strove wildly against the impulse to leap
to his feet and rush off, screaming. He knew, soon
or late, his nerves must give way under the strain.
Then the end would come. And he braced himself for
the wait.
Meantime, through his anguish of suspense, he found
brain-space for the ardent cursing of one of the two
men he worked for. This man was Barry Gale. It
was Gale who had leased the little Number Three
range where the sheep now were grazing. He had
leased it for three months longer; instead of follow-
ing the advice of his partner, Dick O’Rell, that the
bunch of sheep be sent two months early to their
mountain pasturage, on the government grazing land,
over in the Tuscan Peaks region.
Toni had looked forward longingly to this season
of summer pasturage among the quiet mountains. He
would be far away from his nosy employers and free
to loaf outrageously on the job; while his tiny black
collie, Zit, would wear down pads and flesh by extra
herding work.
It was Toni who had suggested to O’Rell that the
snows were gone from the lower mountain passes by
now; and that an early exodus from the plain would
not only save lease-money, but would give the flock
the advantage of grazing on the new grass of the up-
lands, before all the other ranchers of Tehama County
should send their sheep to the hills for the summer.
Had Toni's advice and O’Rell's been followed by the
pig-headed Gale, the herder would now be miles away
from this miserable rolling meadow and from the brace


14
BLACK GOLD
of murderous rattlesnakes about to kill him. Where-
fore, the Basco mingled his efforts at prayer with far
more successfully eloquent efforts at cursing Barry
Gale. And, between times, he sweated and froze with
terror.
All this century of torment in the space of perhaps
twenty seconds. But its intensity kept the Basco from
seeing anything but the vibrating three-cornered head,
with its ice-black bead eyes and the two pinpoint "pits”
below them. These and the forked tongue. He was
deaf to all but that low dual whirring.
Perhaps that was why he was oblivious to the springy
tread of feet over the grayish-green cropped grass and
to the stocky figure of a man who was strolling in his
general direction from across the rutted red lane which
bisected the grazing ground.
Barry Gale, Marylander by birth and Californian by
enthusiastic adoption, was taking this short cut home to
his little ranch house, from a two-hour business session
with the County Agent at Red Bluff, a few miles to
southward.
Inspecting his flourishing young orchards of navel
oranges, early that morning, he had come upon stray
signs of the dread mealybug scourge. And, in haste, he
had betaken himself to the County Agent for help and
advice ;—on precisely the same principle that sends a
man with sudden cardiac pangs to the nearest heart
specialist. As he walked homeward, now, he was re-
peating over to himself, for better surety of remember-
ing:
"Five gallons of distillate emulsion.—Ten pounds of


BLACK GOLD
15
soap powder.-Water, one hundred gallons.—Average
cost, about three-quarters cent per gallon.—When the
bottom of the spray tank is ”
Gale broke off in his lesson's recital, with a grunt
of disgust. He had entered the pasture. Subcon-
sciously, he had taken in the general details of the
scene before him :—the gray-green rolling land be-
neath the miracle of the California blue sky, with the
giant emerald mountains, beyond, standing guard over
the rich Sacramento Valley, and with Shasta's eternal
snows dazzling the eye far to northward;—the shift-
ing gray-white groups of grazing sheep, and their
absurdly small black collie sentinel on a knoll in the
field's center.
All this had photographed itself, mechanically, on
Gale's brain. It was a scene that could be duplicated
a thousand times within a thousand miles. But there
was one vital detail lacking, a detail which was certain
to catch and hold any rancher's irritated notice, a detail
whose absence drove from Gale's throat that grunt of
vexation.
In other words, the picture lacked the inevitable
figure of the statuelike herder, brooding over his flock.
No herder was visible. Toni, apparently, was not on
the job.
As his worried eyes roamed the field, Barry Gale
presently saw a patch of faded blue denim between
the chewed branches of a corner bush. And thither
he bent his steps.
At the rancher's heels trotted Roy, his big gold-and-
white collie-a show-type dog—as different as day


16
BLACK GOLD
and night from the square-built and wideheaded little
Zit. Roy caught Toni's scent, just as Gale caught the
glimpse of blue shirt. And in mild interest the collie
padded along beside his master, to investigate the
phenomenon of a herdsman who was lying drowsily
under a bush in broad daylight.
Before the two had traversed more than half the
ninety feet of distance which separated them from
Toni, the collie halted abruptly in his tracks, his aristo-
cratic long nose wrinkling in disfavor, his dark eyes
aglint with wrath. In his furry throat a warning growl
was born.
The dog's nearsighted eyes had not discovered the
presence of the huge coiled snake on Toni's chest, nor
of the reptile's mate on the ground, six inches from
the helpless man's shoulder. But a whiff of breeze
had just brought him the scent of both serpents ;—the
nauseating crushed-cucumber smell common to all
varieties of pit-viper. And he checked his lazy trot
with much suddenness. A collie hates and fears poison-
ous snakes.
Gale was too much of a dogman to disregard his
collie's warning. He stopped, alongside Roy, and
glanced around him. He could see nothing to warrant
the growl. To his ears, faintly, came a whirring sound
that might well have been made by a locust and to
which he gave no heed.
Presently, the rancher began to move forward again,
but cautiously and with every faculty strained to obser-
vation. Roy moved forward with him in visible and
growing reluctance, his shoulder pressed close to his


BLACK GOLD
17
master's knee, deep muttering growls still swelling far
down in his throat.
Ten feet away from the recumbent Toni, Gale
stopped his advance. He had seen the herder's face.
It was not a pretty sight.
Its sheer hideousness of green-white complexion, up
rolled eyeballs, panic-grinning teeth and distorted
muscles was enough to startle any beholder.
As he gazed, lips parted for an exclamation of
amazement, Gale heard, louder and fiercer, the whirr
of the two rattlers. And, his eyes shifting from Toni's
awful face to the big dark smudge on his bare chest,
he saw the smudge resolve itself into a coiled serpent.
Gale wasted not the fraction of an instant in prepar-
ing. In his fist was his knobbed walking stick. In-
stinctively, he caught it by the ferrule and swung it
as though it had been a golf club. His early prowess
on Maryland links gave him speed and accuracy. There
was dire need for both.
To smite downward at the snake was not only to
endanger Toni's ribs,—which could have knit together
again in a short time,—but to run the almost certain
chance that the rattler, smitten and broken, might
strike the Basco again and again in its death struggles.
This danger flashed into Gale's mind and into Toni's
as well as the club went aloft. Changing the direction
of the stroke, Gale swung for the snake's head as
though he were making a drive on the links.
Seeing the stick go up, Toni caught his breath. The
sharp contraction of his chest made the rattler's last
shred of hesitancy vanish. The snake struck.


18
BLACK GOLD
His darting head was a bare inch from Toni's naked
throat when the whizzing handle of Gale's stick landed.
Full on the side of the outflying neck it struck, and
with a skilled force that threw the rattler's whole body
clear of Toni's chest. Leaping across the prone Basco,
Gale landed with both heavy soles on the back of the
wounded snake, driving his heel with full force into
the writhing coils.
Then he turned back. Toni had not stirred. Close
to his ear was buzzing the second rattler's warning.
He dared not so much as cry out to the unsuspecting
Gale.
The rancher strode up to him. But, as he did so,
Roy flashed in front of his master; directly ahead of
the descending right foot. In flashed the collie, and
out again.
Roy had nipped at the snake, coiled so close to Gale's
toe; had scarred the shimmering body with one of his
curved eye-teeth, and had flung himself back and to
one side barely in time to avoid the lightning-dart of
the snake's head.
Thus, of old, had the collie's wolf ancestors fought
such venomous serpents as they could not elude. But
those ancestors had fought.for their own lives. Their
descendant was fighting to save his master.
Before the dog could rush in again, the rattler's
motion had caught Gale's eye. And the man under-
stood that the augmented buzzing sound was not caused
merely by the other snake that lay thrashing its poison-
ous life out, a few feet behind him.


BLACK GOLD
19
Down came the stick,-clubwise, this time, and the
second rattler's back was broken.
"Get up!” ordered Gale, kicking aside the squirm-
ingly impotent body, and addressing the palsied Basco.
“Get up, man! There's no more danger. Of course,”
he added with wasted sarcasm, "if you want to go on
with your snooze, you can stay where you are. No
other pair of diamond-backs is likely to drop in on you,
to-day.”
Slowly, shiveringly, Toni got to his feet. He looked
at one slain snake; then at the other; last of all at the
faintly amused Gale. Then, drawing a quivering
breath, the man began to speak; in the barbarous
Basque patois which Gale, with all his more than toler-
able knowledge of French, found such difficulty in
understanding.
"I hated you," began Toni, thickly. “I called down
a curse on you. I wasted your time that you paid me
for. I did all this. And—and you have saved me
from death. Not alone by your courage, but by your
brain. If you had struck down-50!—the snake on
my breast must have died. But also he must have
killed me, as he died. You saved me. In my hate for
you, I had a thought to hurt you by poisoning that dog
you love. Yet, it was he that found the other snake and
made you see it before it could strike me or you. Mon
maitre, you have made me much ashamed. I.do not
ask forgiveness. But,--but I am your man, from
henceforth.”
As Gale was straining every faculty to catch the full
meaning of the mumbled.patois words, the Basco ceased
8
.


BLACK GOLD
21
speak again when Barry Gale put an end to the maudlin
performance by whistling Roy to heel and continuing
his homeward walk.
Gale's sole reaction from the episode was one of
amusement and of a light contempt for his herder's
exhibition of Gallic melodrama. Densely ignorant of
the queer Basque nature, Barry had not the remotest
idea that he had just won for himself a fiery devotion
as complete as Roy's own-a devotion which, one day,
might be worth more to him than any offensive or
defensive weapon ever forged by mortal man.
Barry Gale was the son of a progressive Chesapeake
farmer, who had trained his boy to the paternal pro-
fession; only to have Barry, at twenty, turn his back
on the farm and announce his intent of becoming a
doctor. Followed a three-year medical course, and
then a small start in Baltimore as a physician.
Just as Barry was beginning to get on his feet in his
chosen trade, a woman had come into his life. She
was not a woman of the vampire type such as exists
in the movies and seldom elsewhere.
Maida Drace was an unspoiled girl; daughter of
Jared Drace, the arch-financier who in those days was
employed in standing Wall Street on its head and grab-
bing the cash that cascaded from its upturned pockets.
She had come to Baltimore to visit a school friend and
to recuperate from the fatigues of her first “season.”
There, Barry had met her.
At once, he had fallen crazily in love. It was his
first love affair. And it took heavy toll of him. Be-


BLACK GOLD
23
neglected, by their predecessor,—was on a more
than paying basis. On a small scale they were imitat-
ing the Sale method of barley growing; and with as
much success in their own lesser way.
Then, a year or two earlier, they had been among
the pioneers of Northern California's rice-growers.
And this rice crop alone was now netting them more
money per year than all their other ventures combined.
The silty, clayey soil of one of their sheep pastures,-
little better than hard pan,—had proven ideal for rice-
growing. And they were selling this crop, in the paddy,
for more dollars per bushel than they could have gotten
for any other grain by the cartload.
Altogether, the cousins had prospered, mightily.
Yet, deep down in Barry's heart, burned the memory
of the girl he loved and whose wealth put her as far
beyond his reach as though she were living on the
planet Neptune.
He did not let the memory make him gloomy or
interfere with his myriad everyday interests. But it
was always there. He told himself, from time to time,
that he was beginning to forget. Yet, he knew he
was making lamentably slow progress.
The old wound had received a new twinge, a year
earlier, when news reached him, in a roundabout way,
that a New York capitalist had just bought a five-
thousand-acre tract of mountain-and-ranch land, along
the Sacramento River, near the Iron Canyon-a tract
whose southern boundaries bordered a part of his own
ranch—and was employing a horde of laborers to
erect thereon a huge stone house. The twinge came


24
BLACK GOLD
when he learned that this capitalist was Jared Drace.
He was not surprised that any millionaire should buy
so picturesquely beautiful an estate and should build
thereon a house worthy of its surroundings. Many
an Easterner was finding Northern California an ideal
place for such a winter home. But that it should have
been Maida Drace's father, of all men!
And, even while Barry cursed the amazing coinci-
dence, his supposedly half-healed heart hammered
madly at the prospect of seeing Maida again.
Though Gale schooled himself to remember that
Maida could never be anything to him and that his
only peace of mind must lie in keeping entirely away
from her, yet he felt vaguely miserable when he heard,
later, that Maida had not accompanied Drace on his
journey to California.
According to neighborhood rumors, the multimillion-
aire was living in a somewhat eccentric fashion at his
new big house in the midst of his wilderness tract. His
family were not there. Nor was there any such
retinue of servants as people had been led to expect.
Except for his secretary, Wolfe Naylor,-a tall and
saturnine man whom Gale had seen once or twice in
the Red Bluff bank,—and for a body-servant named
Sludge, and three or four Chinaboys, Drace lived
alone.
Thus he had been living for the past six months.
Nor, so report said, had he once stirred from off his
own estate. There were none of the gay house-parties,
none of the conferences with fellow-magnates, none
of the mingling with local interests, which folk are


BLACK GOLD
25
wont to associate with a great landowner's country life.
Jared Drace, apparently, had come to this wonderland,
to live as a hermit. The one or two neighbors who,–
in California's infinitely hospitable manner,-had
called to welcome him to the region, had been received
by Wolfe Naylor and had not had so much as a
glimpse of Drace, himself.
If the house was short of servants, the estate itself
was not tenantless. Tehama County had discovered, to
its wondering amusement, that the land was patrolled
by not less than twenty khaki-clad guards, who lived
in a long stone barracks building, not far from the
main house.
These guards carried rifle or automatic and turned
back all chance trespassers they met. Such a pro-
ceeding, in friendly California, woke the mirthful
amaze of the county. By the time this bit of news
had been talked over to boredom, came a second fillip
to local curiosity.
A steep little stone gorge,-a sort of vertebra to
Iron Canyon,-ran through one end of the estate, to
the south, where a tongue of Drace's land jutted into
Gale's. For the past few months, gangs of laborers
had been working in double shifts in this tiny gorge.
They had not been local laborers, but had been im-
ported from somewhere east of the Sierras; and were
kept from mingling with the folk of the region. From
the direction of the gorge by day and by night had
come the eternal sound of hammering, of digging, of
windlass and chain and engine and of occasional blasts.
This kind of thing, of course, had been too much


26
BLACK GOLD
for neighborhood curiosity. Many an idler had strayed
over the boundary line and had made futile effort to
learn what the secret new enterprise might be,—which
was calling for day and night shifts and so much
racket. But, always, a guard was somewhere on hand
to turn back the curious. And the nature of the work
remained a mystery.
Of late, one batch of laborers after another had
been taken down to Red Bluff, by night, and loaded
onto the southbound trains. Thus, it was inferred, the
task was nearing its end.
Some gossips hinted at the sinking of a shaft for
gold. But wiser men pointed to the carloads of cement
and structural steel which had been shipped by truck
from station to the estate; and declared these things
were not germane to mining. So the mystery held.
It was not a mystery which interested Barry Gale,
overmuch; though his garrulous cousin, Dick O’Rell,
had wasted much lung-power in conjectures about it.
Maida was not at the Drace estate. That was enough
in relief and in sorrow—for Barry to know. Where-
fore, he stuck to his own work and used up his sur-
plus energies in the task of trying to forget the girl
who, innocently, had so changed the current of his
life.
. To-day, as Gale quitted the sheep range and the
shakily grateful Basco, he quickened his step. The
afternoon was drowsing toward sunset. Barry wanted
to get home in time to mix the mealybug spray for the
following morning's use, before he must make his
evening rounds of the ranch. He had spent more time


BLACK GOLD
27
in Red Bluff than he had intended to. And he was
needed at home.
Leaving the pasture, he skirted the jut of rockily
uneven woodland where Jared Drace's grounds dove-
tailed into his own. By making a short cut through
this tongue of woods he could save nearly a quarter
mile on his homeward trip. He had often done this,
in other days, before the big estate was bought by
Drace. Of late, respect for the myriad "No Trespass”
signs, rather than any fear of the truculent armed
guards, had kept him off his unneighborly neighbor's
land.
But this afternoon, in his haste and in the abstrac-
tion of his mind, he forgot to turn to the left, as he
reached the woods. Instead, absentmindedly, he
stopped, and climbed through the narrow gap between
the high fence's wire strands.
The air in the woods was cool, after the glare of
sun, and the light filtered down duskily through the
arched boughs. The pine-needles made a soft carpet
to the man's tired feet after his long trudge over hard
roads and uneven sward. Gale paid scant heed to these
allurements, as he strode on. For, as became a farmer,
he had schooled himself to enjoy the myriad beauties of
nature without letting them delay his business.
The forest was made up of lofty pine and redwood.
The trees arched high above, and there was no under-
growth to impede his steps. Fantastic boulders reared
their heads here and there, like prehistoric monsters,
above the drifts of brown pine-needles. Great mis-
shapen black pine-cones, half as large as a man's head,


28
BLACK GOLD
were scattered here and there. Over all brooded a
mystic greenish half-light and the stillness of death.
Giving no conscious note to the eerie atmosphere
of the wood, Barry moved on. Yet, without realizing
it, some sense of the place's stark loneliness must have
come to him. For he glanced around for Roy.
The collie was not at his heels. For an instant, Gale
wondered, regretfully, at this defection. Then he re-
membered that, as he turned into the wood, Roy had
been galloping ahead, in pursuit of a ground squirrel.
The dog had not seen his master enter the wood. Roy
knew they were bound for the ranch house. When he
should cease from his vain chase of the squirrel, he
would undoubtedly continue his homeward journey;
under the impression that his master was following
close behind. So near home, the dog was not likely to
bother about casting back for Barry's trail.
Still haunted by that unconfessed sense of loneliness,
here in the dark woods, Barry drew in a breath, to call
the absent dog to him. The breath was exhaled in a
low whistle of surprise; as, at his feet, he chanced to
see an object which would have been far more in keep-
ing in a Fifth Avenue shop window than here in the
Iron Canyon woods.
Nearly five years earlier, a Canadian lumberman had
had his foot crushed by a trolley car, while on a visit
to his mother in Baltimore. Gale had set the broken
bones and had done it so skillfully that the victim could
at last walk with no vestige of lameness. In gratitude,
when he paid the nominal bill charged by Barry, the
lumberman had given Barry two ermine skins which


BLACK GOLD
29
he had brought all the way down from Alberta with
him as curios. Barry had had the skins made into
a cardcase-purse, and had given it to Maida Drace. It
had been an unusual present and had had a wrought
clasp as unique as itself.
This ermine purse, now, almost five years later, lay
at Barry Gale's feet, here in the California forest.
The man picked it up, wonderingly. Forgotten was
his haste; forgotten was everything else that pertained
to the present time.
The worn white purse between his brown hands, he
stood staring unseeingly at it; half his mind a blank
of bewilderment, the other half of it racing wildly.
He was back in Maryland. It was the evening of
Maida's birthday. Nell Carrington, her hostess, was
giving the New York guest a jolly little birthday party.
Gale was invited to it. With him he brought the
quaint purse he had just had made for her. With him,
too, he brought a decision to tell Maida, that very
night, of his overwhelming love for her.
She had been so childishly delighted over the little
gift, and she had thanked him so sweetly! Then,-
what was the phrasing of the tidings Nell Carrington
had told him after Maida had passed on to another
room with another man? What was it? Oh, yes!
She had said:
"A purse was the most appropriate thing you could
have brought her. She has all the money in the world,
and she ought to have more things to put it all in."
He had asked what she meant. And he had learned
then for the first time that Maida Drace was the only


30
BLACK GOLD
child of the Drace—the multimillionaire, the Croesus
who was reputed to be one of the five richest men in
America! And he-he, Barry Gale—was a strug-
gling young doctor whose whole yearly practice was not
worth fifteen hundred dollars. And he had been about
to ask Maida to share that princely poverty with him!
He had gone home early, that night, on a plea of some
needful professional call. And he had never again seen
Maida.
Yet here, in his hands, was his pretty gift to her!
Here in this strip of North California woodland,
almost four thousand miles away from the city where
he and she had met. For perhaps a full minute, the
man stood turning the fur purse over and over, and try-
ing to still the keen pain that stabbed at his heart as
memory re-awoke and tore loose from the pitiful bonds
wherewith he had sought to bind it down.
Then sanity came back. And Gale began to think
more clearly.
There was nothing astounding about this discovery,
after all. Now that he stopped to think it over, the
only astonishing thing about it was that the girl should
have troubled herself to keep so insignificant a gift for
so long a time.
He was on her father's land ;-although he had not
paused to consider this act of trespass. Maida doubt-
less had come out to Tehama County to visit Drace or
even to make her home with him. She had been
strolling through this wood, and had chanced to drop
her purse. The whole thing was quite natural.
Yet, this knowledge, strangely, did not abate the


BLACK GOLD
31
overmastering thrill which had encompassed Barry at
sight of the ermine bauble. Rather, it sent that thrill
mounting to his brain, dizzying him.
Maida was here! She was within a mile or two of
him, at most! Fate had brought her back to him; in
spite of all his quixotic resolves to forget her.
Briefly, common sense and his careful plan of cam-
paign struggled against the vibrant impulse which mas-
tered him. He told himself that he had prepared,
months earlier, for just such a contingency as this. He
reminded himself that he had vowed to keep away
from her, should Maida come to Tehama County. As
Drace lived like a recluse it was not likely the financier
had so much as heard the names of his neighbors.
Maida need never know, perhaps, that she and Barry
were living so near to each other.
All this, Gale now told himself for the fiftieth time.
Which was all the good it did him. For, even as he
recounted his excellent resolutions, his active legs were
striding fast in a direction at right angles to the one
they had been following.
He had faced to the East and was hastening toward
the sharp ridge which rose a quarter mile in front of
him and which cut off from his view the main part of
Jared Drace's estate. From the top of that ridge,
probably, he could see the chimneys of the big house
itself; or, at any rate, could find some landmark to
guide him toward Maida's home.
She had dropped this purse, here in the woods. Per-
haps she had dropped it only a few minutes earlier.
Perhaps even now she might be just beyond the ridge.


32
BLACK GOLD
At the possibility, Barry Gale's fast walk merged into
a run.
Afterward, there would be plenty of time for him
to kick himself for a born fool for not letting ill enough
alone and for tearing open a wound that had never
wholly healed. Afterward, it would be time to recall
that his position in life and Maida's were still approxi-
mately as they had been ;—that he was merely a pros-
perous small rancher, while she was the heiress to
something over a hundred million dollars.
Much could be remembered,—and regretted,
afterward. For the moment, the only worthwhile fact
in all life was that he and Maida Drace were in the
same part of the world again and that every swinging
step was bringing him nearer to her. What was to
happen when they should meet,—whether, indeed, she
would so much as remember who he was,-Barry had
not the slightest idea.
Nor did he care. His starved heart was putting
wings into his flying feet. And the ridge was close in
front of him.
The nature of the ground had changed, in the past
quarter mile. Gone were the smoothly rolling undula-
tions. The wood was scraggy and gaunt. Instead
of boulders, now, there cropped out everywhere huge
blocks of black mineral,-volcanic rock of a long-past
æon,-dull and sinister and in cubes well nigh as reg-
ular as if they had been hewn by some monster hand.
There were gashes in the dull black earth, too; scars
of long ago fissures, in the days when Mount Lassen's
volcano still had the same effect on the surrounding


BLACK GOLD
33
country as has Vesuvius's. The scene was such as
Dürer loved, in his morbidness, to sketch ;—such a
scene as forms the back-and-foreground of his Death
and the Knight.
Behind, a bare half mile back, were spring sunshine
and the warmly lovely North California landscape with
its endless miles of smiling ranchland and of blossom-
ing pink peach trees against a dreamy wall of snow
mountains. But, here in the gaunt forest, Nature was
in her most sinister mood.
As far as Barry was concerned, he did not know
nor care whether his thudding soles smote against
basalt blocks or roseleaves. Somewhere ahead was the
girl who was all in all to him; the girl he had never
learned to forget. That was everything in life which
mattered.
The ridge,-a precipice-like outcrop of volcanic rock
which covered a long wrinkle of earth, some seventy
feet high, thrown up by a prehistoric eruption,—reared
itself in black masses of lava and basalt, to check his
progress. Up it he went;—a breath-and-muscle-testing
climb whose difficulties he did not note in his eagerness
to get to the top.
Not for a year or more had he climbed this cliff-
like rise. Dimly, he remembered that there was some
sort of a gully or narrow wooded valley beyond; and
then a succession of abrupt hills, one of which was cut
transversely by a gorge. Up somewhere in that tumble
of volcanic hills, was Jared Drace's house. There,-or
between here and there,—was Maida Drace.
The steeply arduous climb started Gale's mind on a


34
BLACK GOLD
new tack. His only reason for believing Maida was
here rested on his finding of the ermine purse. Was
it not strongly possible that she had tired of the thing,
long ago, and had given it to some servant of the
family? Or perhaps to some one else connected with
her father's household? Might not this "some onę
else” have dropped it? Might not Maida herself still
be in New York?
He breasted the summit, and paused; while his
anxious gaze swept the country in front of him. Ahead,
the sun was setting in a dazzle of yellow glory. Barry's
eyes, accustomed to the dusk of the woods, blinked as
the level rays smote athwart them.
He took off his cap and held it to shield his brows
from the glare and to permit him to see beneath it.
As he was lifting the cap, something whisked it
sharply out of his hand. At the same moment, the
venomous snap of a rifle sent crackling echoes out of
every rock and cleft for a mile around.
Barry, dazedly, glanced down at his cap. It lay on
a black volcanic rock, a few feet away from him;-a
bullet hole drilled neatly through it.
Gale throbbed with a hot gust of anger. Often he
had seen armed guards patrolling Drace's land. Oft-
ener, he had heard of their brutal threats to trespassers.
But he could not bring himself to believe that one of
them could have fired, without warning, and in day-
light, at a harmless intruder like himself. He stared
angrily around him. His eyes, grown used now to the
light, focussed on a spot a furlong in front of him.
The remembered gorge gashed a rocky hillock at


BLACK GOLD
35
that point. Masses of earth and stone and a few barrels
of concrete and some bright steel bars and a mixing
trough for cement littered the opening of the gash.
Just behind this, around an aperture in the rock, three
or four men were grouped. Some were dressed as
laborers; others were in khaki.
Directly in front of these and on a slight eminence
of rock, stood a tall and wiry man in riding clothes.
He gripped a rifle, from which he was ejecting a shell.
Even at that distance, Barry recognized him as
Wolfe Naylor, Drace's lanky secretary. And he
shouted hotly to the fellow to put down the gun. As
he called, Gale began to run and to slide down the
farther side of the ridge, toward the group.
By way of reply, Naylor whipped the rifle to his
shoulder again, and took aim. And, from behind him,
a new figure stepped out into the open and upon the
rock where Naylor stood.
The newcomer was a woman; slender, infinitely
graceful, in her snowy afternoon dress. The sunset
light glorified her and seemed to envelop her in a
shimmering white aura.
Her face was turned toward Barry; and, in the sun-
set it was transfigured.
Forgetful of his peril, Gale stared in rapt adoration
at her. And his panting lips formed the soundless
cry of,
"Maida!"
Then, simultaneously, two things happened.
The girl threw out her arm, with a frightened excla-


36
BLACK GOLD
mation of protest, and struck up the leveled rifle-barrel.
And, as she did so, Naylor fired.
This much Barry Gale saw. This much he always
remembered. But, that was all he saw or remembered.
For his muscular knees turned to tallow. He plunged
forward through a sky full of multi-hued shooting
stars.
Then everything went black; and he sank for miles
down into a cool darkness. After which he slept-or
died. He did not know which. Nor did he care.


CHAPTER TWO
M ALE awoke with a racking headache and a buzz-
J ing of his ears. There was a strong smell of
liniment in his nostrils.
For a few moments, he lay still, while thought and
memory came back. With no trouble at all he was able
to trace the various happenings of the afternoon, up to
the point where Naylor had fired and Maida had struck
up the barrel of the rifle. Everything since then was
a blank.
Presently he opened his eyes. He was lying on a
big white bed in a big gray room. Twilight was deep-
ening into dim dusk, through the windows. Gale lifted
his hand to his head. His practised fingers encountered
there a damp bandage that had evidently been applied
by an amateur in such matters; but by a conscientious
and deft amateur.
Barry got to his feet, somewhat shakily; and made
his way to a wall mirror. Before this glass, in the
fading light, he lifted the bandage and examined the
hurt it covered. Already, from his sensations and from
his surgical knowledge of wounds, he had made a fairly
accurate guess as to the extent of his injury. Now,
supplementing sight with touch, he muttered, half
aloud, as he had been wont to in the olden hospital
days:


88
BLACK GOLD
“Just a superficial abrasion.—Left frontal, an inch
above the temple.—Mild case of concussion.—A touch
of iodine and a scrap of adhesive would have been
enough, without this liniment-soaked turban.-And,
now, as the swooning heroine would say,—'Where
am I?!”
He moved toward the nearest window. His head
still throbbed; but the pain was lessening; and he no
longer felt shaky. The bullet, sent wild by Maida
Drace's gesture, had struck a rock above Gale, on the
ridge, had ricocheted and in passing had kissed the
man's forehead. The impact had apparently been
severe enough to cause slight concussion of the brain
for an hour or so; but had left the skull uninjured.
Incidentally, it had left Barry with a keenly healthy
curiosity as to what had happened since then and as to
where he might now be.
As he neared the window, Gale could see the far-off
mountain-wall that girds the Sacramento Valley to east-
ward; Mount Lassen with its cap of snow and its faint
reek of volcanic smoke rising high into the twilight sky
from far behind the Tuscan Peaks. Nearer,—perhaps
a mile to southward,—Barry could see the blurred line
of the ridge he had scaled. Between it and him was
flung the jumble of hills and gorges he had seen in the
brief instant before the vision of Maida had dazzled
him.
Thus, at first glance, he knew he must be in a rear
room of Jared Drace's big new stone house. But
whether he had been brought hither a prisoner or as


BLACK GOLD
39
an act of mercy to a wounded trespasser he could not
tell.
Directly below the window was a flagged courtyard
whose far side was bounded by a nine-foot roughcast
wall. A wide gateway pierced this outer wall. And the
gate was standing open. Just outside it stood a low-
hung motor truck. The radiator of another such truck
was visible behind the first.
As Gale was still looking aimlessly down from his
second-story window, he saw a man step out into the
courtyard, from the house. The man was Wolfe
Naylor. The secretary took a step or two into the
courtyard, then turned back and spoke. Barry leaned
forward, until his face touched the pane. In his heart
was a sudden hope that it might be Maida to whom
Naylor was speaking.
From his new angle of vision, as he advanced close
to the windowpane, he could see that a cellar door of
wrought iron, just below him, was open. Out of this
subterranean hole was emerging a line of men.
They looked like gnomes, in the uncertain gloaming
light. The likeness was the greater, because each and
every man in the long single file was bent double by
an uncouthly awkward weight of some sort, carried on
the shoulders.
Out from the cellar and into the courtyard and
across the flagging, crawled the queer, dimly seen pro-
cession of hunched-over men in brownish garments;
all-but reeling under the heavy and formless burdens
they bore.
Wolfe Naylor, in front of them, directed and mar-


40
BLACK GOLD
shaled the odd line toward the gateway. As the first
of the burden-bearers staggered through it, Naylor
stood to one side. His sharp eyes ran over the sway-
ing line of men. And,- whether by mere chance or
whether attracted by the blur of lighter color against the
window pane above him,-he glanced upward.
For the fraction of a second, he stared at Gale; and,
in the dusk, his dark face seemed to twist and to grow
paler. Then his whole visage blazed into fury. With a
snakelike swiftness his right hand sought his hip.
At the same instant, the window shade was jerked
downward, and Gale's indistinct view of the court was
cut off. As the shade was lowered, the dark room
sprang into brilliant light.
Barry whirled around. At his elbow stood a man.
One of the newcomer's hands still held the bar of the
shade he had lowered. The fingers of the other were
just dropping away from the electric light switch, in
the wall beside the window.
The man must have come into the room on shoes of
silence. The lowering of the shade and the turning on
of the light were Gale's first intimation of his presence.
The interloper did not speak, nor did he so much as
glance in the guest's direction. He passed on to the two
other windows, methodically, and pulled down their
shades.
Gale's eyes followed him, in a sort of fascination.
The fellow was dressed in closefitting and almost cler-
ical black. His hair was sparse and dark; and it was
plastered smoothly to his large head. Thus far he


BLACK GOLD
41
vered by odely blament trainin
bore, in manner and costume, the aspect of a typical
well-trained upper servant.
But after a single glimpse of his pallid face, Barry
had no thought for the man's other characteristics. The
face was small for so large a head. And it was color-
less. The features were inconspicuous,—all but the
eyes. These were unusually wide-open. The pupil and
iris were entirely covered by a pale grayish film.
A single glance at these widely blank orbs was
enough for a man with Gale's long medical training.
This servant was blind;-stone blind from birth.
What struck Barry with astonishment was the blind
man's unhesitant and direct manner of moving about
the room. He did not stumble nor grope, after the
manner of the blind. His step was assured.
As he passed by the foot of the bed, on his way to
the third window, his hands were hanging limp at his
sides. The little finger of his left hand happened to
brush lightly against one corner of the damp head-
bandage which Gale had taken off and tossed there.
Instantly, at the feather-light touch, the man paused
in his progress across the room. Not turning his eyes
downward, but with a lightning-quick play of his sen-
sitive long fingers, he located the bandage; lifted and
folded it and carried it along with him, as he went to
the window. In like manner, as he came to a chair
which Gale had shoved a yard or so to one side in
reaching the mirror, the first touch of the man's advanc-
ing foot against the chairleg told him of its presence in
a place where it did not belong. Instantly, he checked
his advance, before the touch of his toe could approxi-


42
BLACK GOLD
mate anything like a kick. Picking up the chair, he
restored it to its wonted place; and moved on.
Shifting his interested gaze from the blind man's
face, to his feet, Barry saw he was shod in list slippers.
Not only did this account for the utter silence of his
tread; but it rendered his sensitive pedal nerves con-
scious at once of any obstacle in their way.
Sketchily, Gale ran over in his mind the tales he had
heard of this household's personnel. He recalled the
gossip that Naylor and Drace's valet, Sludge, and the
Chinaboys were the financier's only indoor employees.
And he jumped to a conclusion. The blind man had
finished his rounds of the room and was at the door; his
hand on the knob.
"You're Sludge, Mr. Drace's valet, aren't you?"
asked Barry.
“Yes, sir,' answered the man, respectfully; adding,
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?"
"Yes," said Gale "you can tell me how I got here, for
one thing; and why I was— ".
"I'm sorry, sir," replied Sludge, a faint uneasiness
tinging his severely correct manner, "but I am afraid
there is nothing I can tell you. I heard you had had
an accident and had been brought here; and that Miss
Drace had bound up your head and that she said you
were not in danger. She took a first aid course, sir,
and she knows about such things. She said you were
not to be disturbed until you came to yourself. Mr.
Drace sent me up here to see if you needed anything
and to arrange the shades and the light. That is all I


BLACK GOLD
43
know about it. Is there anything I can do for you be-
fore I go down, sir?”.
Gale made no reply. He was gazing foolishly at
the bandage in Sludge's hand; and thinking he would
have taken it from his head in less contemptuous fash-
ion if he had known Maida's fingers had bound it there.
Taking Barry's silence, apparently, for a negative
answer to his query of service, Sludge left the room.
Barry stared after him, his brows puckering. Every-
thing here seemed so queer,—so abnormal;—the
gnome-like procession of burden-bearers, marshaled by
Naylor;—Naylor's homicidal snatching for the pistol
stone-blind valet, so super-efficient in spite of his afflic-
tion;-above all, the primal fact that Wolfe Naylor
should have opened fire on him as he stood harmlessly
on the ridge-crest above the gash-like little gorge.
None of it made sense, to Gale. Yet it made as much
sense as that he should be once more in the same house
with Maida Drace. And at the thought he thrilled with
eager anticipation of seeing her again. Not more than
five minutes had elapsed since his awakening. Yet he
felt he had wasted precious time. Everything could
wait,—the solution of these odd problems, and all;-
everything except the sight of Maida.
He went to the door ;-wondering if by any chance
it might be locked from the outside. His defiant turn
of the knob proved he was not a prisoner. For the
well-oiled door swung outward at his first pressure.
Gale found himself in a wide upper hallway with a
flight of broad and shallow stairs ahead of him. Cau-


BLACK GOLD
tiously,—for his head still ached and his steps were
not yet wholly steady,-he descended these stairs.
In the stone-floored hall, below, a huge hearth-fire
crackled. Its flickering light played fitfully on wall-
trophies and on the few bits of massive furniture that
were scattered through the raftered foyer. It played
also on the white dress and sunny hair of a girl who
was hurrying in from a rear room, her white little
hands full of fresh bandages.
Half way down the stairs, Barry Gale halted, at sight
of the advancing girl. She did not see him, until she
had set one dainty foot on the lowest stair. He did
not speak; but stood, dazed and ridiculously happy,
staring down at her.
Then as she began the ascent, she glanced up, and
saw him standing above her. With a little cry of sur-
prise, she halted. And for an instant the two faced
each other, wordless. It was Maida who broke the brief
silence.
"Barry!" she exclaimed, an almost maternal solici-
tude in her sweet young voice. “You mustn't be walk-
ing around like this! And your bandages have come
off, too! I left you not ten minutes ago, to go and
look for these other dressings. And here you've !
Oh, are you feeling any better? Any better at all?”
"Why, I'm all right, now!” he laughed, to reassure
her and to banish from her upturned face the look of
worry. "It was only a tap on the head. My head is
uncommonly thick, so I've been told by most of my
friends. And I'm in first rate shape. So it was just


BLACK GOLD
45
a prolonged knockout;—nothing worse. As soon as my
ears stop singing, I'll be as good as new.”
"You should have lain still,” she insisted. “I tele-
phoned for the nearest doctor I could find in the book.
But he wasn't at home. They promised to send him
over here as soon as he gets back. Come here and sit
down. You oughtn't to be standing up, when
you're "
"I'm all right,” he declared, taking from her grasp
the big hall chair she was trying to push toward him.
“But it's good to sit down," he added, sinking into the
chair's deep cushions as she seated herself on a fire-
side bench near him, “because it means we can talk, the
way we used to. Do you remember the long confabs
we used to have, in front of the hall-fire at the Car-
ringtons'? We ”
He broke off in his retrospective speech. He had
not meant to bring back old times or even to hint at
them. Yet, at almost his first word, he had blundered
into the past. Before he could shift the current of talk,
the girl shifted it for him.
“What must you think of us, here?” she was say-
ing, earnestly. "You know what happened to you,
don't you? You were shot. And— ”
"So I gather," he interposed, drily, "but please don't
be distressed about it. If I remember rightly you
spoiled Naylor's otherwise flawless aim by knocking his
rifle aside as he was drawing trigger. I have you to
thank for "
"Please don't blame Mr. Naylor, too severely," she
begged. "It wasn't as bad as it must have seemed.


46
BLACK GOLD
You see, he thought you were one of the poachers who
have been overrunning our place for the past few
months. He thinks they are trying to get the lay of
the land, to rob the house; or perhaps to steal from
some of the storehouses. He is obsessed on that
danger. And when he saw you to-day he thought of
course, coming from that direction, and so far from
any road or anything,—that you were spying out the
land. So he took a rifle from one of the guards and
fired twice. Not at you, but over your head, to frighten
you off. The poor fellow was terribly cut up when he
found how near he had come to killing you."
“H'm!" mused Gale, recalling the hole in his cap
and the steady aim of the gun for the second shot.
“Yes,—he must have been terribly cut up. Surely.
But when a man has such cute impulsive little ways
with a rifle, he must expect a shock now and then.
Don't let's bother about it, any longer, though. No
harm is done. How did you happen to be there? And
how did you happen to have me brought here instead
of taken home or down to the hospital at Red Bluff?"
“We couldn't take you to your own home," she
said, “because none of us knew where you live, or
whether you live anywhere around this region. I
wanted to have you rushed straight to the hospital.
But Mr. Naylor examined your head and he saw it was
not a dangerous wound. And he wouldn't take you to
Red Bluff. He said people would gossip."
"That's quite possible,” conceded Gale.
"He wanted you tended, there, in the canyon, until
you could come to yourself enough to tell us where


BLACK GOLD
47
you lived. But I made them bring you home here, of
course. Mr. Naylor is very efficient and all that. But
he doesn't seem to have much sympathy or understand-
ing for people who are in trouble. I've noticed that.
The idea of rigging up a shack of boughs, and making a
pine needle bed in it, as he suggested we do, and leav-
ing you for one of the guards to look after! It's lucky
I happened to be there. I had been for a walk, through
such an uncanny, ghostly bit of forest, and over the
most impassable ridge! And I had just happened to
come out at a point where Mr. Naylor was superin-
tending the work some of the men were doing. I hadn't
been there five seconds, when he fired at you. You
must have been only a little way behind me. I had
stopped to rest for a while on the top of the ridge, of
course. But- "
"You say Naylor was terribly cut up, when he found
he'd creased me," ventured Gale. “How did he show
it? By bitter tears or only by swooning?"
"Not by either of those approved old ways," she con-
fessed. “In fact, he didn't do or say much. But I
could see from his face how the accident had shocked
him. He
"I see," assented Gale. “I know the type. One of
these strong, silent men who show no trace of outward
emotion,-as long as they're winning.”
But he said the last five words in the recesses of his
own heart; and he recalled Naylor's expression and
the swift reaching toward his pistol, when his eyes had
encountered Barry's, from the courtyard.
Barry was frankly puzzled. He could not account


48
BLACK GOLD
for Naylor's double effort to shoot him, down yonder
by the gorge. In view of the course both shots had
ally fired over Gale's head. And assuredly, that reach-
ing for the automatic at his belt, there in the courtyard,
had been no accident!
Yet why on earth should the man hate him and yearn
to murder him? The two had never exchanged words,
nor had they so much as been introduced. They had
seen each other perhaps twice, in all.
Naylor, presumably, had not known Gale's name, nor
where he lived. Otherwise he probably would have had
the injured man carried to his own home. In spite of
this, he had tried to kill Barry; and presumably still
yearned to kill him. Sane men do not do these things.
Yet Naylor, presumably, was sane. Gale gave over the
unsolvable problem, and turned to the pleasanter pur-
suit of listening to Maida. She was saying:
"I couldn't believe it was you. I saw you, for just
that flash of time, standing on the ridge. You had
changed so much and grown so much more tanned and
muscular and—and careworn, this past four or five
years! But in that second I recognized you. I-I
don't yet know what you are doing out here. Nell
Carrington wrote me, ever so long ago, that you'd left
Baltimore. But she didn't know where you'd gone.
And to think of my finding you, thousands of miles
away! I didn't come out here, myself, till last month.
But you must have known I was here, didn't you?
Why didn't you come over to see me, Barry? I've been
so lonely, here, all by myself! Father is busy and


BLACK GOLD
49
abstracted, all the time. And I don't know any of
the people out here. Oh, it's so good to have met you
again! Are you in California on a visit or do you
live here, now?"
"I live here,” he made answer, spreading out his
hardened palms for her inspection. "Don't these cal-
louses tell their own story?”.
"Your hands don't look like a doctor's, any more,"
she mused, studying them, her dainty head on one side.
"They look so strong and rugged and efficient and
all. Like a farmer's hands. You aren't a farmer, are
you?"
“There aren't any farmers in California," he re-
proved her with mock solemnity. “There are no
farmers west of the Sierras. As soon as a farmer,
traveling west, crosses the Divide, he ceases automatic-
ally to be a farmer; and becomes a rancher. Every
farm, this side of Kansas, is a ranch. Whether it
covers half a state or half an acre. No, I'm not a
farmer. I'm a rancher. If a cyclone should pick up
a Kansas farm and blow it all the way out here, the
farm would change in mid-air, into a ranch, the instant
it crossed a certain imaginary line. And if a man, from
the West, traveling East- "
"You're a rancher ?” she queried, with a real interest.
"A rancher? And you used to be a doctor! They said
you had so much promise, too!”
"My promise was as nothing, to the promises of my
dead-beat patients,” he made light answer, seeking to
skirt a perilous theme. “And at last I grew tired of
uncollectable bills; and of pouring medicine of which


50
BLACK GOLD
I knew little into human systems of which I knew
nothing. Mother Earth always pays her bills, in one
form or another, to the man who knows how to collect
his payments. Medicine is largely guesswork. Farm-
ing is an exact science. It is the greatest profession
on earth, for the man who brings brain and brawn and
enthusiasm to it. It's the profession of the future.
And I'm right on the ground, winning the most worth-
while triumphs a man can win. Yes, I'm a farmer.
Or, rather, a rancher. And I'm content to stand
pat on the job, till doomsday. So much for myself,"
he finished, glad to have shunted the conversation off
the theme of his leaving the East. "Now, how about
you? What have you been doing? Have ?
"Why did you stop coming to see me, there in Balti-
more?” she interrupted, suddenly, with the quiet direct-
ness he remembered as her strong trait. “Why did
you, Barry? Had I done anything to offend you? If
I had, wouldn't it have been fairer,—wouldn't it have
been kinder,—to tell me what it was and to give me a
chance to explain or to say I was sorry? Wouldn't it,
Barry?”
Gale sat up straight, and blinked. This mercilessly
direct attack swept away his network of words and left
him defenceless. For the moment, he could only stare
miserably into the level dark eyes that challenged him.
"I felt ever so badly about it,” she went on, with
that same staggering frankness. "Honestly, I did,
Barry. Four times I wrote to you, asking you to call.
In one of the letters,—the longest of them all, it was,-
I asked you to tell me what the matter was; and I said


BLACK GOLD
51
I was sorry if I had done anything to make you un-
happy or to "
"You wrote me four letters?” he exclaimed, in con-
sternation. “I never got one of them! What must you
have thought of me for not answering— ?!
"You never got them,” she explained, “because I
never sent them. You see, I was only eighteen. And
at that remarkable age, Pride is the greatest possession
there is. As soon as I'd get one of the letters written,
I'd have an acute attack of pride. And into the fire it
would go. The letter; not the pride, worse luck. That's
why you never heard from me. But you haven't an-
swered my question. Why did you stop coming to
see me? Did I bore you?”
“You wouldn't know how to bore anybody, if you
tried all day!" he answered, half-roughly. “And you
know it. I can't tell you why I stopped coming to see
you, Maida. I want to tell you. I'd rather tell you
that than anything else I could tell. But I can't. That's
all there is to it."
She was looking at him steadily and intently with
the scrutinizing gaze he remembered so well. For a
moment she did not speak. Then, dropping the subject
as abruptly as she had introduced it, she said:
"I am to stay out here with father for a month more.
Perhaps longer than that. I came out because I was
homesick for a sight of him. I wanted to come, long
ago. But he wouldn't let me. At last, I picked up
and started across the Continent without saying a
word to him about it. I telegraphed from Los Angeles.
And he had Mr. Naylor meet me at Red Bluff. But-


52
BLACK GOLD
somehow Father wasn't nearly as glad to see me as I
had thought he'd be. He's changed, dreadfully, this
past year. He must be having perfectly horrible bus-
iness worries. But I can't get him to say a word to me
about them.”
"Why in the world did he ever come to California;
I wonder ?” asked Gale. “I don't mean for part of
the year, but to shut himself up like this? Is his health
bad or — ?"
"No," she said, "it doesn't seem to be. When he
told me he had bought all this land and was building
a house, I was ever so glad. I thought we'd have such
jolly times. But we haven't. He wouldn't even let
me come here with him. It isn't one bit like Father to
turn hermit and hide away from people. I can't under-
stand any of it. There's so much, lately, I can't under-
stand at all!”
“There's one thing I can't understand,” commented
Gale, with a touch of natural curiosity. "And that's
what he is building or digging, down in that gorge
below the ridge. If it's a house, it's in an almost inac-
cessible location. The same if it's anything else.
It- "
"That's what I asked Mr. Naylor, when I stumbled
in on them at work there, to-day," said Maida. "He
seemed actually annoyed and a little bit flustered, when
I walked in on them. I'd never been there before. It's
such an out-of-the-way corner. Mr. Naylor said it was
a well of some kind they were digging, for irrigation.
He'd gotten as far as telling me that, when he caught
sight of you. After that, there were more important


BLACK GOLD
53
things for me to do than to ask him more questions."
"A well,—for irrigation?" repeated Gale, incredu-
lously. “He was guying you. There's no water there.
Or if there is, it's tainted with white sulphur, the way
it is in those springs at Iron Canyon. And he'd have
to dig through half a dozen solid hills of rock to lay
his pipes, or his ditches. He "
"We'll ask Father," said the girl. “I was going to
take you into his study, right away. But somehow, we
got talking, and I forgot. He ought to be told if the
well won't be any use for irrigation. And anyway, it
didn't look very much like a well. There were all
sorts of queer steel things and steel doors and concrete
walls and— ”
Crash!
Subconsciously, as Maida was speaking, Barry had
noticed the blind valet enter the hall from the rear, on
his way to some first floor room. Sludge had been
walking with a sure and steady step. Yet, in the
middle of Maida's last sentence, the blind man had
lurched sideways, almost as though with intent, and
had caromed against a six-foot-tall Satsuma vase which
stood in an angle of the fireplace.
The vase tumbled to the floor with a most ungodly
racket; and brought both Gale and Maida to their feet,
on the jump.
With a mumble of contrite apology, Sludge was
down on hands and knees amid the myriad fragments,
groping for them and collecting as many as he could
find into a pile on the hearth. Maida took the mis-


54
BLACK GOLD
fortune pleasantly; accepting, in a kind word or two,
the man's frightened plea for pardon.
Her back had been toward Sludge, when the mishap
occurred. But Gale had been facing him. And he
could have sworn the thing had not been done by
accident.
"Come !" said the girl, turning from the wreck of
the vase and from the humbly scrambling figure among
the ruins. "Let's go into the study. I want you to
meet Father. You're sure you're strong enough to
walk?"
They crossed the hall and entered a passageway that
led to a lighted room, beyond. As they went, Maida
whispered:
"Poor Sludge! It wrung his heart to do that. I
really believe it's the first time he ever broke anything,
in all the three years he has been with Father. He's
blind, you know. But he's miraculously clever in get-
ting about. Father says he is by all odds the best valet
he ever had. His predecessor lost his job when Father
found him, one day, reading some of the private papers
in a strongbox. Father says that's one thing Sludge
will never be able to do. He's a treasure.”
"I never heard before of a blind valet," observed
Gale, absently, his memory still on the odd downfall of
the vase.
"Father says Sludge always knows where everything
is; and that he never makes a mistake. He does better,
Father says, than nine-tenths of the people who have
eyes."
As she spoke, she tapped lightly on a door at the


BLACK GOLD
55
short passage's end. From beyond, a tired, somewhat
high-pitched voice called leave to enter. Maida opened
the door; and she and Barry passed into a wide and
low-ceiled room.
The study was meagrely furnished; and the only
light was a single-shaded electric bulb which cast its
ray on a heap of blue-prints in a table's center; leaving
most of the rest of the room in dense gloom.
At the table, poring over the roll of blueprints, sat
a man. On first glance, Gale recognized him, from his
newspaper photographs, as Jared Drace. But those
photographs had given the impression of an aggres-
sively healthy and somewhat large man in late middle
age. The man crouched over the blueprints was wiz-
ened and stooping and old. His hair was white. His
face had hundreds of lines in it.
His sallow skin sagged, as if much more flesh had
once supported it. In the tired old eyes was a brood-
ing and furtive look; behind which a vague terror
seemed to smoulder.
So much the first casual glance told Barry, as the
shaded light vaguely illuminated his host's face.
"Father," Maida was saying, "this is Mr. Barry
Gale. He and I are old friends. I think I told you
so, when he was brought here. He is feeling very much
better than I dared hope he could. And he understands
the shooting was an accident. I've been telling him how
sorry we all are."
Drace had been rising slowly, and with apparent
effort, from his chair. With stiff courtesy, he held out
his flabbily thin right hand to his guest.


56
BLACK GOLD
"I am sincerely sorry," he said, "to learn of your
injury. And I am glad it is not more serious."
As he spoke, he was peering, through the dim light,
at the flesh-cut on Gale's forehead. He frowned
slightly, and added :
"But really you know, Mr.-Mr.-Gale, is it not?-
you know you were culpable in the matter, too. It was
contributory negligence, and worse. It was flagrant
trespass. My grounds are posted. In the Red Bluff
Sentinel and in the News and in the Redding Search-
light and in other papers of this and adjacent counties
I have advertised that trespass on my estate will be
severely punished. By disregarding those notices you
laid yourself open to
"To sudden death ?" queried Gale, nettled by the tone
of lofty rebuke. “Hardly, I think. The law against
trespass does not make the offense punishable by homi-
cide.”
"Pshaw!" fumed Drace. “There was no question
of homicide. As my daughter must have explained to
you, Naylor fired in the air. His sole motive was to
frighten you off.”
"If a bullet hole through my cap and a bullet graze
on my head are the results of his 'firing in the air,'”
suggested Barrry, good-naturedly, "then, if it's all the
same to you, next time I hope he may fire directly at
me. In that case his bullets will only hurt the atmos-
phere."
"Still," insisted Drace, petulantly, waving aside the
mild pleasantry, "still, the fact remains that you were
trespassing. By the way," he continued, a note of


BLACK GOLD
57
veiled worry creeping into the voice which he strove
to make elaborately unconcerned, “by the way, what
were you doing there? How did you happen to be
trespassing on that precise spot? -Not that it matters,
especially.”
Barry Gale was thinking fast. He could not tell this
inhospitable old multimillionaire that he had been
racing wildly over forbidden ground, spurred on by a
crazy yearning to set eyes on Maida again. Compro-
mising with conscience and yet preserving the body of
the truth, he pulled out of his pocket the ermine purse
which had given him the clue to Maida's presence in
the neighborhood.
"I found this lying on the ground, near my boundary
line,” said he. “I recognized it as a purse that I—that
used to belong to Miss Drace. And I- ".
"Oh, I see,” broke in Drace, with manifest relief in
his dry-as-dust tones. “You were on your way here
to return it to her? Very kind and—and neighborly
of you. I am all the more sorry that Naylor behaved
as he did. Yet, surely, you could have sent it back to
her by mail, couldn't you?”
Gale had handed the worn little purse to Maida.
Their hands and their eyes met, in the exchange. And
for the briefest part of an instant, Barry was oblivious
to everything about him. Thus, he missed Drace's
question. So, for that matter, did Maida. Yet, she
was aware of a momentary embarrassing pause. And,
womanlike, she began to speak rapidly, on the first
subject that came to her mind; in order to bridge the
gap.


58
BLACK GOLD
"Oh, Father," she began, “Mr. Gale is a rancher near
here. And he knows all about irrigation. He says that
queer well you are having dug, down in the gorge, is
no sort of use for irrigating. He says there's no water
there, except sulphur water, and that the pipes would
have to- "
She paused. Jared Drace had gotten to his feet
again. He was shaking all over.
"What are you talking about?” he demanded,
harshly.
“Why,” returned the girl, surprised at his vehemence,
"about that funny looking thing down there in the
gorge. I ran across it by chance this afternoon, just
before "
"Oh," interrupted Drace, with a mighty attempt at
ease of manner, "that thing? It- "
"Yes,” she explained. “What did you suppose I was
speaking about? Mr. Gale says it's not a good place
to sink a well. He saw it, too. And he says "
"It isn't a well,” said Drace, still steadying his voice
with some difficulty. “Who told you it was?”
"Mr. Naylor said so. I asked him and he "
“Naylor doesn't know anything about it,” rapped out
Drace, in blustering confusion. “It isn't a well. It's
ama silo pit.”
"A silo pit!" echoed Gale, in amazement, as he re-
called the appearance and location of the work. “A
silo pit, down there;—a mile from your nearest out-
building and two miles from the nearest field or "
"I'm—I'm experimenting on a new theory of en-
silage," declared Drace. “A theory of my own. And


BLACK GOLD
59
I chose an out-of-the-way place for the experiment. A
-a place where outsiders wouldn't be likely to hang
around and pry into my formulas."
"I see,” said Barry, pitying the floundering attempts
to lie convincingly; and realizing that, whatever the
purpose for the excavation in the gorge might be, it
most certainly was not dug for ensilage. Drace went
on to elaborate his improvised tale.
"You see,” he expounded, "I came out here to in-
dulge my hobby for farming. It had always been a
dream of mine to get away far enough, some time, to
putter around a big farm and work out my own
theories. That's why I bought this tract. That's why
I'm here.”
"I see,” said Barry, again.
Mentally, he was visioning the stretch of arid hills
and gorges that made up the wilderness estate; and its
contrast with the bloomingly cultivated miles of land
that hemmed it in. This and the fact that not one
inch of the Drace estate, so far as he had seen or heard
of, was under any sort of cultivation. With covert
curiosity he eyed the glibly lying financier.
Maida caused a slight and welcome diversion, just
as Drace was beginning to discourse still further on
the theme.
“You'll stay for dinner, of course, Barry?” she said,
rising. "So I'll leave you two farmers, I mean,
ranchers,-to argue over crops and ensilage-sites, while
I tell the Chinaboys to have an extra place at the table.
You're our very first guest; so I must go and break the


60
BLACK GOLD
news to them. Their ideas of service are still a bit
rudimentary."
She left the room. Drace had not seconded the in-
vitation whose acceptance Maida had seemed to take
for granted. In fact the financier was looking frown-
ingly at his unbidden visitor and his thin fingers were
fidgeting at the table edge. Barry, noting all this, was
seized by a whim of mischief, to tease further this un-
gracious host of his.
"I'm glad you have come out here to farm," he said,
ingratiatingly. “We need men of your means and
and ideas. My own little ranch is just south of your
place. I'd be glad if you'd drop in for a look at it, some
day. And I'll be still gladder if you'll take me for an
inspection tour of your own crops. I'm a lot interested
in what you were saying about experiments. That
silo-pit, down in the gorge, for instance. I noticed
there was quite a lot of structural steel used in making
it. And what was the idea of the six-inch steel door
I caught a glimpse of? Not that it's any of my busi-
ness, of course," he added apologetically, "but every-
thing pertaining to new things in my own profession
interests me. I must surely tell the County Agent about
that silo scheme of yours, next time I see him. I
know he will be delighted to come over and inspect it.
He'll probably embody a description of it in his next
report to the government, too. So "
He ceased; in sheer pity for the harassed man before
him. Drace was glaring at him like a cornered animal.
The old man's face was stricken and livid. At the


BLACK GOLD
61
suggestion of a governmental report, his jaw sagged
and his tired, bloodshot eyes bulged.
Drace cleared his throat twice; then managed to
speak.
"I hope you will not consider me discourteous," he
began, choosing his words with labored care. “But
one of my objects in coming to California was to be
alone and to avoid all needless contact with my fellow-
men. I-I had had a severe nervous breakdown. My
doctor prescribed such a life as I am now living. A
life apart from all social duties. It-it is benefitting
me. I do not wish to have that benefit curtailed or
impeded. Thus, I must ask that you do not bring my
experiments to the notice of anybody. I–I cannot
have my estate overrun by inquisitive outsiders. I can-
not have my rest-cure broken in on. Please under-
stand that. And please respect an elderly invalid's wish
for complete privacy. As I say, I do not intend to be
discourteous. But-
"Why, certainly!” agreed Barry, a twinge of sym-
pathy for the old man's evident distress blurring for
the moment his own very natural curiosity. “Please
believe that I would not willingly do anything to dis-
tress you, Mr. Drace. I spoke without thinking. You
see, we Northern Californians are a chummy lot; and
we are hospitable, to a fault. Indeed, even in Virginia,
I have never known such perfect hospitality as here.
Every one seems eager to do all he can for the stranger
at his gates; and to share with him not only the last
scrap of food, but any bit of farming information that
may be of use. That's why I fancied you might be
Rust


62
BLACK GOLD
willing to share with us the results of your experiments
and "
The study door was flung wide. Wolfe Naylor
strode in; slamming shut the door after him. Up to
the table he hurried; where Drace was sitting huddled
low in his big desk chair. Barry had seated himself
on a window bench, some yards distant. Thus, he
was wholly outside the faint and narrow radius of light
from the single incandescent bulb.
"I'd have been back sooner," began Naylor, excit-
edly, speaking as he advanced into the room, “but I
didn't dare leave them alone with it. That pest, Gale,
was spying on us from a window. He knows too
much. And he suspects too much more. It won't do
to let him out of here. You should have let me have
my way, in the first place. I'm going up there now.
Miss Drace needn't know. No one will know! He'll
just disappear; that's all.”


CHAPTER THREE
ARED DRACE'S wild efforts to catch his atten-
J tion, and to silence his furious outbursts, went un-
noted by Naylor. Not till Barry himself strode from
his seat in the dark window recess and out into the
glow of light, did the secretary check himself.
Then, staring aghast at the unexpected apparition,
he stood, for an instant, dumbfounded.
"You were speaking of me, weren't you?” asked
Gale, evenly, as he confronted Naylor.
Barry spoke without heat. Yet his eyes were ablaze.
In his brain a fierce and wholesome rage was awakened.
This man had tried to kill him,-a stranger,-and now
in cold blood, hours later, was again planning to put
him out of the way. It was more than Gale's usually
calm temper could carry.
"I think,” he went on, edging closer to the astounded
Naylor, "I think you just said I was not to get away
from here alive, didn't you? And weren't you asking
leave to do the job? Well, here I am. You're saved
a trip upstairs.”
"Mr. Gale!" quavered Drace, placatingly, "you will
pardon me if I say you would better go. If you wish,
I will have one of the cars take you home. Naylor, I
left some letters in my bedroom I wish you would go
and get them for me. They are on the "
"Pardon me, Mr. Drace," interposed Gale, “but this
63


64
BLACK GOLD
matter can't wait. Naylor, you tried to kill me, to-day.
Later, you put your hand to that pistol at your hip,
when you saw me. Just now, you spoke again of want-
ing to kill me. All that is not on the free list. We've
come to a showdown, you and I. What is your grudge
against me?”
"The grudge I'd have against any man who sneaks
and spies on us here!” retorted Naylor, momentary
astonishment swept aside by a flurry of rage. “I'd
shoot such spying trespassers as readily as I'd shoot a
skunk or any other vermin.”
"I'm not 'spying,' as you call it, on any one!" blazed
Gale. “You and Mr. Drace best know whether or not
you have anything that needs hiding. But whatever it
is, it doesn't interest me. I am here, because you shot
me. You may thank your stars you're not spending
the night in the white stone jail, down at Red Bluff! I
am going to continue coming here, as often as I please;
until some one with more authority than a murder-mad
secretary forbids me to. Please understand that, very
clearly. Now, we'll come back to the subject of put-
ting me out of the way. Here I am. What are you
going to do about it?”
His tone was as insulting as a kick. Naylor,-
perhaps in empty bluster or from force of habit,
reached convulsively for the automatic pistol he still
carried at his belt. In the same instant, Barry darted
forward and caught his pistol hand by the wrist.
As the weapon leaped from its holster, Gale threw all
the muscular power of his stocky body into a scientifi-
cally forceful wrench of Naylor's imprisoned wrist.


BLACK GOLD
65
Unprepared for such attack, Naylor had not time to
brace himself. He cried out with pain as the wrist
turned sharply backward.
The pistol clattered to the hardwood floor. By the
time it touched ground, Barry had dropped Naylor's
right wrist and had stooped swiftly to pick up the fallen
gun. Thus, through no skill of his own he missed a
ferocious left-hand swing which the secretary aimed at
his head. Over Gale's stooping body the blow whizzed.
Drace, at the instant, threw himself forward and caught
Naylor's arm; interposing his wizened body between
the two antagonists.
Gale picked up the pistol and slipped it into his own
pocket.
"I never have toted one of these things," he re-
marked, cheerfully, “but it's less likely to do damage
in my possession than in yours. If you want it again,
you can come over to my ranch for it. And— ”.
“Go, Mr. Gale!" exhorted Drace, struggling with
the cursingly raging secretary. "Please go, now. I'm
sorry this has happened. Naylor has acted only
through zeal for my welfare. Please go.”
"Certainly," assented Barry, adding: "I couldn't
very well do anything else after what's happened. It
would hardly be pleasant, I suppose, to sit down to
dinner with one man who has tried to kill me and with
another who abets the matter and orders me out of his
house. Good-night.”
He left the room; glancing back for a last view of
the old financier and of the fuming Naylor, who was
still muttering and struggling to get free.


BLACK GOLD
67
silo pit of your father's, down in the gorge. How
about it?"
"I'd love to!" she cried, happily. “There's a dear of
a range horse here that I've been breaking to the sad-
dle. Promptly at ten? I'll be ready."
From the study came the muffled explosion of a full-
flavored oath. Barry hoped Maida might not have
heard it.
During the long walk home, Gale's mind wavered
between his illogical joy at having met his oldtime
sweetheart again; and a bewildered throng of conjec-
tures as to the odd mystery he had stumbled upon.
Hitherto, he had felt scant interest in the neighbor-
hood guesses as to Jared Drace's life in California.
Now, all at once, he found he had enrolled himself
eagerly in the guessing contest.
Why, in the first place, had Drace left his lifelong
home in the East and come out here to bury himself
in a lonely big house on a lonely big wilderness estate?
The man had not fallen foul of the law. He was not
in hiding. For the newspapers, both East and West,
had mentioned his coming to Tehama County and his
new home there. Nor were his gigantic financial deals
of a kind to set the law on his track.
In the East,—as Gale knew from the newspapers
and from things told him long ago by Maida,-Drace
had not led in any way a hermit life. He had had a
hundred interests and had been more or less a public
character. His social life had been broad and active.
Yet here he lived as a recluse. The yarn about doctors'


68
BLACK GOLD
orders for seclusion and of a "rest cure," did not fool
this ex-doctor, at all.
What was Jared Drace doing? He was doing some
thing;—something in which Wolfe Naylor was his
zealous lieutenant;—something which not only was
making him old and a nervous wreck and giving his
eyes a haunted look, but that called for lies and for
stark secrecy.
For example,—that "silo pit" with its structural steel
and its tons of Oriental cement and its massive safe-
deposit-vault door! What was that thing, anyhow?
Drace could not possibly be doing any sort of mining.
This particular belt of Tehama County had never been
rich in gold. And a man of Drace's wealth would not
be doing any hole-and-corner gold-mining, under strict
secrecy.
In fact, Barry recalled reading, a year or two before,
-as his love for Maida had always made him read,
avidly, any press mention of her or of her father,
that Drace had been one of the world's largesteindivid-
ual buyers of gold, during a flurry in Wall Street. A
man does not purchase gold by the million dollars
worth, in open market and through agents, and then
sink a mine-shaft in an unpromising corner of an
unpromising mining county for such few dollars' worth
of it as he may or may not be able to exhume.
No, the whole thing was a mystery. And Gale was
certain that its solution was as unknown to Maida
as to himself. He ceased to tire his aching head by
trying further to solve the problem. And his thoughts
surged back to Maida.


BLACK GOLD
69
The girl was as far away from him as ever. She
must always be so. It was madness for him to seek
a renewal of the sweetly perilous friendship he had so
wisely broken off, years before. He was only laying
up sorrow for himself. He knew that.
Yet, with the fatuous self-deception of love, he told
himself it would be cowardly in him to keep away
from the house where he had been threatened. ; He
would show his lack of fear and his self-respect by
going there openly and often and without regard for
danger. Which line of reasoning showed, if nothing
else, to what straits of idiocy and self-deception a
virulent case of love can lure an otherwise sane man.
Oddly enough, during that homeward walk, Barry
troubled himself little as to Naylor's mysterious hatred
for himself and the secretary's unprovoked attacks on
him. Once, the unaccustomed pressure of the heavy
automatic in his pocket reminded him of his fiercely
brief encounter for its possession. And, in disgust,
he pulled the weapon from its resting place and tossed
it into a clump of manzanitas, some hundred feet up the
hillside from the road.
He resolved to say nothing to his cousin, and partner,
Dick O’Rell, about his adventure; but to attribute his
abraded forehead to a tumble among the rocks; and to
mention casually that he had met Maida Drace, who
was an old acquaintance of the Baltimore days.
He knew O’Rell's innate excitability and the man's
devoted loyalty to him. The tale of the attempted
killing would be quite enough to send Dick rushing
across to the Drace house, bare-handed, to thrash the


70
BLACK GOLD
secretary, or to stand the whole household on its
head.
O’Rell, too, had all the venturesome curiosity of
a schoolboy. Once let him get an inkling of mystery,
and he was quite capable of going to the alleged "silo
pit” and exploring it until a bullet should cut short his
investigations. Wherefore, Barry resolved to hold his
peace.
He was saved the trouble of any involved explana-
tions. For, as he entered the ranch house dooryard
and started up the path to the porch, Dick O’Rell heard
his step and came hastening out to meet him; with the
collie, Roy, gamboling in eager welcome, ahead of the
man.
"Come on in here!” exhorted Dick, dragging Barry
into the house. "I've got the grandest scheme that ever
came down the pike. It's a reg'lar ol' he-one! I've
been fidgeting for an hour, waiting for you to come
home, so I could tell you about it.”
“If it's that wild-eyed plan of yours, again, to plant
a grove of sugar maples instead of a walnut orchard,"
began Gale, “I tell you for the tenth time, there's noth-
ing in it. Out here, they'd never "
"Sugar maples?” snorted O’Rell, in fine scorn.
"Sugar-fiddlesticks! This time it's the real thing I've
got hold of. It's—it's GOLD!”
He had been leading the way into the littered living
room; fishing a crumpled newspaper out of his pocket
as he went. Now, turning on the puzzled Gale, he
demanded:
"Ever hear of the Ruggles brothers?”


BLACK GOLD
71
“Yes," assented Barry, with a show of much
patience. “I have. And I've heard of Peter Lassen.
And I've heard of Commodore Stockton and John C.
Fremont. If there is any one in this section of Cali-
fornia who hasn't heard of the Ruggles brothers, I'd
like to have a picture of him. If you're going to rake
up the old yarn of their lost treasure, suppose you wait
till I've had supper?”
"Listen to this!" ordered Dick. "It's in to-day's
Sentinel. I didn't have a chance to look at our copy
till I got back from work. If I had, I'd have started
on the hunt, right away; without waiting for you or for
to-morrow morning. I'll read the whole thing. It isn't
very long. Listen:"
Clearing his voice, he spread out the newspaper and
began to read; his throat contracting with excitement :
"Memories of the famous Ruggles holdup were re-
vived in a peculiar way by a post mortem statement
made by Joshua Z. ('Curly') Enright, who died in
Red Bluff Hospital late last night.
"Most of our readers are familiar with the story of
the three brothers, Ruggles, of Fresno, who robbed
the mine stage of more than $50,000 in gold bullion,
at Robbers' Rock, above Middle Creek, in the early
Nineties. It will be recalled that these three brothers
shot and wounded John Boyce (later sheriff of Trinity
County) the express messenger; and looted the bul-
lion. In less than two hours, a posse captured the
trio and they were hanged to a pine tree in the city of
Redding.
“The bullion which they stole has never been found.


BLACK GOLD
13
A laugh from the skeptical Barry broke in on the
thrilled reading. O’Rell broke off in vexation.
"And that's what you call a 'discovery,' is it?"
scoffed Gale. “Werlhof's account in the Sentinel says
here that Enright 'refused to designate' the rocky hill
where the treasure was buried. And, if you'll shut your
eyes and visualize the looks of Tehama County, you'll
see that, a very few miles north of Red Bluff, the
Sacramento Valley breaks up into something like five
hundred hills and hillocks and knolls. The treasure
may be buried in any one of them. Or—more likely-
the whole thing may be a fake. Curly Enright was
hardly more than half-witted. And he was the most
egregious old liar and practical joker in Tehama
County, you know. And— "
"A man doesn't generally think up unnecessary lies
or try to spring jokes, when he's dying," argued O’Rell,
annoyed by his cousin's refusal to join in his enthu-
siasm.
“Granting he told the truth,—for once," argued
Gale, "where does it lead to? There are more hills of
various sizes in northern Tehama County than there
are people of any sizes at all. It'd take a thousand
men a thousand years to explore them all for caches.
Wake up, Dick! You are in a golden dream.”
“Sometimes," mused Dick, plaintively, “sometimes
I think you take me for a fool. And then at other
times I know you do. Did you suppose I let myself get
all het up over this thing, just on the face of what I've
read you? Use your memory, old man! What was
the standing joke we had, the first year we were out


BLACK GOLD
75
abouts. While I don't like to speak ill of a man who's
dead, yet we both know Curly Enright was queer in the
brain. And we know he never spoke the truth when a
lie could serve; and that he had a mania for practical
jokes. (Remember the time he started that fake
diamond stampede by saying he had found a bed of
blue clay out on the east side of Tuscan Peaks?) De-
pend on it, the whole thing is a hoax. As for his
prowling around Gopher Hill-
"Well?” prompted O’Rell, as Barry hesitated. “As
to his prowling around Gopher Hill ? Go on.”
"It's all a fake!” growled Barry. "Forget it. The
discovery of gold in California cost the country at
large more than it brought in. It swamped thousands
of men and smashed thousands of homes. California
is the Golden State, all right. But its gold lies in the
wonder-crops its valleys raise and in the wealth the rich
ground is waiting always to give to the man who has
the energy and sense to work for it. And the pluck
and the brain of its people have brought untold riches
to their State. But not in the shape of gold ore. It
wasn't till Californians at large stopped mining and
turned to their wonderful soil for support that they
and their State became the envy of the rest of the
world. Look up north in the mining country, for
instance. The smelting fumes have turned the green
Shasta County hills into deserts. For every successful
bit of dredging and smelting, there are a dozen poor
fanatics still slaving away with pan and pick, up
yonder, at less than day-wages, in the crazy hope that
some day they'll strike it rich. Then look at the rest


76
BLACK GOLD
of the State,-at the places where the gold fever hasn't
turned life upside down. Health and progress and
green hills and fertile valleys and prosperous busy
people. No, California's gold is in her soil and in her
sons. Not in her creekbeds and mines. It--".
"That's one grand little sermon," observed Dick,
understanding clearly his cousin's elaborate ruse for
changing the subject and for banking his own smoul-
dering thrill. “A first rate sermon, Barry, my boy.
But you're begging the question. The question being :
Are you with me in this gold hunt, or aren't you? I'm
starting at daybreak, to-morrow, for Gopher Hill. I'm
going to quarter that hill, methodically; a certain area
of it every day. I'm going to steal two hours a day
for the hunt, till I locate that cache. I may blunder
on it the very first day. I may not find it for nearly
a month. But find it I'm going to. That's settled. Of
course, when it's found, you'll be declared in on the
find; at fifty-fifty. For it's your land as much as mine.
And I'll be taking time from the work we're both sup-
posed to be doing. But, perhaps you'd like to do your
share of the hunting? It'll shorten the job, for one
thing. And, besides, it'll be more fun than a dogfight.
'Two good men on the Ruggles' treasure chest! Yo-
ho-ho and a bottle of unfermented grape juice!'" he
chanted, breaking off to ask again: “Are you with me?''
"No," said Barry, with unusual sharpness, in order
to quell his own yearning for the venture, "I'm not.
And if you're wise, you'll remember this is one of
the busiest months of the whole year. You'll stick to
the ranch work and forget Curly Enright's last joke.”


BLACK GOLD
77
“I'll work overtime, later, to make up for it,"
promised O’Rell. “But that fifty-odd thousand dollars
sounds mighty sweet and soft, to me. And when we've
gotten the private tip that it's right at our very door,-
well, it'd be a crime to pass up such a chance. And
I'm no criminal. I'm after that bullion. Why don't
you make it a two-handed game, Barry?” he coaxed.
“Come ahead, like a good little sport!"
"Because," said Gale, with ponderous sarcasm,
"there's an orange grove here;—and a flourishing
rice-paddy ;-and a barley crop sowed with Sale's own
variety of Experiment Station seed;—and a couple of
thousand sheep;-and a few other trifling details;
and a few overpaid laborers to get at least the minimum
of work out of. If I've any time left, when I've
attended to those minor details, I'll teach myself to knit
or start a guessing contest or take a correspondence
course in How to Tell the Wildflowers from the Birds;
-or do something else that is more useful than hunting
for gold where there isn't any. There's a good deal
more than fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold on this
ranch of ours, Dick. But it's in the form of crops and
sheep. Not in ore or bullion."
"Which brings us back to the sermon again,” said
O’Rell, cheerily, “and is a kindly rebuke to your friv-
olous goldseeking partner. Suppose we let it go at
that, for the present; and chase in and eat? Chang
had supper ready half an hour before you got home.
I want to get to bed early, because I'm due on Gopher
Hill at daylight.”
They tramped into the dining room; Roy at their


78
BLACK GOLD
heels. Chang, the Chinaboy, who was their house-
servant and general handy man, was fidgeting at their
delay. Chang took his culinary work seriously; and
felt any lateness to meals a personal affront to his
cooking.
Not until the cousins were alone together in the
living room after the evening meal, did O’Rell touch
again on the theme so near his heart. Throughout
supper, the two had chatted on indifferent subjects.
Dick, noting the scratch on Barry's forehead, had asked
its cause and had been told the prepared story of a fall
among the rocks,-a story which Barry's barked palms
and dusty clothing bore out. The tumble down the
side of the ridge had bruised him and taken the well-
groomed look from his suit.
Gale had also made casual mention of his meeting
with Jared Drace's daughter and of having known her
in Baltimore and of having called on her that after-
noon. He was a wretchedly bad actor. Yet so im-
mersed was Dick in dreams of gold that the haltingly
confused tale passed muster.
Now, in the living room, O’Rell returned to the
charge.
"You've had a good supper," he began, "and you're
rested up from the day. So maybe you see things less
crookedly than you did. How about it? How about
a little treasure-whirl with me, to-morrow morning?”
“Nothing doing,” refused Gale. “I've got a pretty
full day, to-morrow.”
He was aware of a twinge of guilt, as he remembered
that he proposed to spend two or three hours of that


BLACK GOLD
79
"pretty full day" in riding with Maida Drace. Dick
mistook his hesitation for wavering; and pressed the
question.
“You can spare the time, all right, all right!” he
declared. “We both work too hard. A treasure-hunt
will rest us up. Come along !"
"No, thanks," said Gale. “We've been all over that.
Except," as an afterthought, “that I want to remind
you of one thing; Gopher Hill rises just against the
Drace boundary line; and it's next to the wildest part
of the Drace land ;-out near that queer little gorge of
his. Be careful you don't take a short cut across the
Drace woods-corner. If you do, one of his nobly
efficient guards is liable to take a pot shot at you. I
heard to-day that one of Drace's men actually shot
twice at a trespasser. Keep well on our own side of
the line."
"We aren't living in the Forties !” laughed Dick.
"In this century, people don't shoot innocent tres-
passers; by daylight. Certainly, not in hospitable Cal-
ifornia. Some one must have been stringing you about
a Drace guard shooting twice at a trespasser. Prob-
ably some one happened to be passing through the
Drace tract and heard a couple of blasts. Or even a
couple of rifle shots. (I heard two shots, myself, this
afternoon, a long way off. They were most likely
shooting at a mark.) And the trespasser got cold
feet and imagined he was fired at. That's how such
fool stories start."
"Perhaps so,” agreed Gale, stroking gingerly the


80
BLACK GOLD
abrasion on his forehead. "But it won't do you any
harm to keep on our own land.”
"H'm!" commented Dick. “I begin to see things.
You say you 'happened to meet Miss Drace this after-
noon. I wonder if you 'happened to meet her, while
you were straying on her dad's land. And I wonder
if you want to keep me off that land, for fear I may
meet her, too. I'd hate to think you're selfish, Barry,
my son. If you are, you must be punished. You can't
expect to keep every pretty girl all to yourself. Just
to show you the penalty for selfishness, maybe I'll take
a bit of a walk over the line, myself, after my treasure-
stint is done for the day.”
“There's something else you haven't taken into ac-
count,” said Barry, ignoring his cousin's elephantine
attempts at archness and inwardly praying that O’Rell
might not be rash enough to cross the line near the
gorge. “You forget this bullion is not yours, even if
you find it.”
"Why the blue blazes won't it be mine?" challenged
O’Rell. “Whose will it be, but yours and mine?"
"It'll belong to the people who were sending the
bullion down to the assay office at Redding, back in the
Nineties, when the Ruggles gang looted the stage,"
decreed Gale. "It was stolen from them. If by any
fluke you were to find it, you'd have to turn it over to
them."
"Why'd I have to ?” demanded O’Rell, truculently.
“Who could make me do it?”
"Only one man on earth could make you do it, Dick.
But that one man would make you do it, the very


BLACK GOLD
81
instant you got hold of the gold. He'd make you
restore every ounce of it to the men it belonged to.”
"And that one all-potent and righteous man is Barry
Gale, Esquire, I suppose?” sneered Dick.
“No,” corrected Gale, “that one man is a certain
hot-headed and feeble-minded but gorgeously square
youth named Dick O’Rell.”
Dick grinned, ruefully.
"Maybe you're right,” he admitted, grudgingly, "but
I hate to think so. I'll find the bullion, anyway. After
that, it'll be time enough for me to blackjack Dick
O’Rell's diseased conscience. If worst comes to worst,
the mine people ought to go at least fifty-fifty with
us on it. Think of all the years it's been on our land!
We could charge them storage or corkage or some-
thing on it, per year; over and above the reward they
offered at the time. And compound interest on the
reward, too. Oh, we'll sting 'em, good and plenty!
I'm going to turn in. Good night, old man! If you
change your mind, you'll know where to find me in the
morning. I may even take the whole day off, — just for
the first day, you know,—for my treasure hunt. Good
night, Barry!"
So full of anticipation was Dick that Gale had not
the heart to remind him that they had set aside this
evening, some days ago, for the going over of their
quarterly ranch figures and the balancing of their ac-
count which Barry had that day brought home from
the Red Bluff bank. It was to have been an evening of
figuring and of budget-making ;-always an ordeal to
both of the non-mathematical ranchers.


82
BLACK GOLD
But Gale realized that his partner was in no frame
of mind to bend his volatile brain to the task of compu-
tations and bookkeeping; even if he had not needed a
long night's sleep to freshen him for the morrow's
wild goose chase.
So Barry resignedly got out the various ledgers and
account books of the ranch and sat down to tackle the
dual job alone. He was dead tired; and he ached in
every joint; and his head was throbbing. Moreover,
his thoughts had an annoying way of straying from the
ledgers to Maida Drace.
Altogether, he made slow and laborious work of the
accounts. Hour after hour he moiled over them; until
his mind was wellnigh a blank and he began to nod
from sheer drowsiness.
The living room lamp was beginning to burn low.
In Barry's own bedroom, was a new-filled lamp. This
bedroom adjoined the living room; and its only door
opened out into this latter apartment. Thus, to reach
his own room, from the hallway outside, Gale must
always pass through the living room.
Blinking sleepily, now, he looked up from his work,
and eyed the slowly expiring lamp. He wanted to go
to bed. He felt he ought to finish those miserable
accounts. As he sat irresolute, his gaze once more on
the columns of figures, Roy settled the problem for him.
The collie had been sprawling asleep on the floor
beside his master's chair. For hours he had lain thus.
Once or twice, through the long evening,—the last time
as the mantel clock had tinkled midnight, a few minutes
earlier,– the dog had half raised himself and had


BLACK GOLD
83
tapped with his long muzzle against Barry's elbow, in
token that he was lonely and wanted to be spoken to
or petted.
At such times Gale had dropped his hand absently on
the collie's silken head with a word of careless friend-
liness and had gone on with his work. The dog, satis-
fied, had slumped back into the bourne of dreamland;
whence, presently, would issue a series of growls and
muffled barks and convulsive kicks; as Roy pursued
through dreamland's aisles an army of jack-rabbits or
ground squirrels that refused to be caught. Dogs and
humans are the only creatures that dream. And Roy
was an inveterate and vociferous dreamer.
But, for the past minute or so, he had been slumber-
ing dreamlesssly and without sound or motion. And
the only noise that had broken the midnight silence was
the low sputter of the dying lamp. This and an occa-
sional pen-scratch as Barry jotted down a figure or a
word.
Suddenly, without warning, the collie was on his
feet; a half-born growl merging into a thunderous
bark. Every hair bristling, he flew at the window, six
feet beyond Gale's desk.
Startled by his dog's fierce vehemence, Barry jumped
up. Following the direction of the collie's leap, his
glance rested on the window. It was open; but its
solid wooden shutters had been closed, to keep out
moths and other night insects such as might otherwise
have been attracted by the light.
Now, as Barry stared at it, in the uncertain flicker


84
BLACK GOLD
of the dim lamp, he saw distinctly that one of the shut-
ters had been swung noiselessly open.
At least it had been opened too softly for its sound
to reach his own abstracted senses. But the faint open-
ing of the shutter had reached Roy's acute hearing;
even through the clogging mists of sleep. That and the
unaccustomed scent of whomsoever had done the open-
ing of it.
Even as Gale stared,and before the dog could get
around the table and into the open space in front of
it, the wooden flap swung swiftly shut. It closed with
a sharp rasp. And, almost at once a second rasp
sounded, outside, as though the shutter had been struck
softly after it was closed.
In that tiny fraction of a split second, while the
blind had flown shut, something against a background
of outside darkness had photographed itself on the
retina of Gale's keen eyes.
He had seen, in that incredibly quick atom of time, a
blurred splash of face, dimly shown by the lamp ;-a
face whose details in general he could not grasp. He
could not have sworn whether the thing had a nose or
mouth or whether it belonged to a white man or a
mulatto.
But of one detail he was certain. One salient part
of the face had been vividly distinct. The lamplight
had revealed in the faint blur a pair of eyes, which
reflected back its feeble rays with intense clearness.
It was these eyes that Gale had seen with such amaz-
ing clearness and which had stamped themselves indel-
ibly on his mind.


BLACK GOLD
85
The eyes were unusually large. They were black,
and as luminous as the eyes of a wild beast. But, in
their gleaming depths there had shone a human intel-
ligence, and a strange, unearthly expression which had
sent a cold shiver down the stolid rancher's spine.
They were such eyes as he never before had looked
into; and such as he knew he would shrink from look-
ing into again. There was a concentrated evil-an
unnatural malice,-in them that sickened him.
All this registered itself subconsciously on Barry's
mind in the instant that it took him to vault over the
table and spring to the window. Quick as he was, the
furious collie was there ahead of him; snarling in fierce
menace, rearing his furry body aloft and tearing with
impotent forepaws at the closed shutter.
Pushing aside the raging dog, Barry caught the shut-
ter fastenings in both hands and thrust with all his
might to open them. The shutters moved for perhaps
an inch, in response to his shove. Then they stuck.
Something stronger than Gale was holding them
shut from outside.
The man wasted one more quarter-minute in
wrestling with the non-movable blinds. And, as he
wrought,—with Roy leaping and growling murder-
ously at his side,—he caught himself, by an odd trick
of mind, casting about in his memory to locate those
briefly-visioned eyes. He knew he had never before
seen them or their like. Assuredly, they belonged to
no human face he had ever beheld. Yet they were
human eyes. Not the eyes of a beast. Rather, such
eyes as a human might have had in witchcraft days,-


86
BLACK GOLD
a human who had sold himself body and soul to Satan
and in whose eyes lurked a reflection of the fires of
the Pit.
With a final wrench at the window-shutters, Barry
abandoned the fruitless task.
Turning, and shouting to Roy to follow, he rushed
toward the door of the room. This door led into the
short entry hall and was not ten feet from the front
porch. It ought not to be the work of more than a
few seconds at most for Barry and the dog to reach
the front steps and then the side yard where hid the
man who had peered in on him.
In the midst of his indignant resolve to catch and
punish the Peeping Tom, Gale felt again that queer
dread of encountering those unearthly eyes. For once
in his plucky life he knew something akin to fear.
Driving the unwonted impulse from him, and aflame
with anger that anything or anybody should have been
able to make him even momentarily afraid, Barry
crossed the room in two strides, and turned the knob
of the door.
As he turned it he pushed hard. Such momentum,
ordinarily, would have sent the door flying open as if
from the jar of an explosion; and would have driven
the outer knob into the plaster of the hallway's wall.
But now the violent push had no effect, except to
bark Gale's knuckles on the panel as his fingers were
shoved by their own momentum from the slippery knob.
Something—something heavy and soft and seem-
ingly immovable—was holding the door shut by
pressing against it from the far side!


BLACK GOLD
87
Barry Gale had a weird sense of being trapped by
invisible creatures which were barring the room's sole
outlets and holding him prisoner. Again came the
creepy memory of the briefly-glimpsed eyes out yonder
in the darkness. And again, by sheer pluck and anger,
Barry put the horror from him.
Gathering himself together, he hurled his wrath-
driven compact hundred-and-eighty pounds of muscular
weight full against the resisting door.
As he did so, the empty lamp flickered tremblingly
and then went out.
Through the black darkness, Gale dashed himself
headlong against the door-panels.


CHAPTER FOUR
M o find a window and a door mysteriously barred
T against one's egress is an annoying sensation,
even in broad daylight. At dead of night, there is
something eerie about it.
To combat this vexing sense of the supernatural,
Barry put fierceness as well as weight and strength
into the plunge wherewith he hurled his powerful body
at the door a second time.
The impact sent the panels to splintering. It flung
the door itself wide open and sent Gale catapulting out
into the hallway. The pressure holding the door shut
had been removed.
Out into the half-lit hall spun Barry Gale, unable
to check his own momentum. But something checked
it for him.
This "something” was the gigantic and uncouth
body of a man, who had rolled from his resting place
across the doorsill, at Barry's first shove and who
now was rising clumsily to his feet.
Into the rising man caromed Gale's flying head and
shoulders. The force of the collision sent both men
rolling to the floor, with a crash that shook the house.
Barry did not pause to investigate. Here at last
was something solid and tangible ;—not a phantomlike
creature with uncanny eyes,-a creature that swung
open shutters and peered in and then vanished. This
88


BLACK GOLD
89
· new opponent was gratifyingly normal to the touch.
And Barry pitched into him with a murderous zest.
The giant did not resist. All he did was to mutter
confused protests and seek to fend off with his huge
hands the shower of blows Barry was raining on
him.
Roused by the din, O’Rell came running out of his
bedroom, flashlight in hand. The sword of white light
smote upon the giant's face. Barry desisted from his
wild assault and drew back, in stupid astonishment.
“Toni!” he stammered.
The Basco herder got dazedly to his feet, nursing
an ensanguined nose with one hand, while he tested
a loosened tooth with the other. Above his hamlike
hands he gazed on the dumbfounded Barry in sad
reproach.
"What in blue blazes is the row ?" queried Dick
O’Rell.
"Some one was peeping in at me,” explained Gale,
lamely. “I jumped for the window. He closed the
shutter in my face and somehow fastened it shut. I
made for the door. There was a weight against it. I
pushed my way out and fell over Toni. I didn't know
it was he, of course. And I suppose my nerves were
a bit on edge. Thanks for saving me from making
a further fool of myself.”
As he spoke, he glanced covertly at the badly messed
Basco's eyes. They were dull and a topaz yellow,
under their beetling thatches of dark brow;-the odd
shade of eye seldom found outside the Pyrenees
lands. Certainly they were not the luminous black


BLACK GOLD
91
might be he would enter the house. It is so easy to
enter. And it might be that harm was in the wind for
you, mon maitre, from this man. So I came in softly
at the front door that was not locked. And I lay
across your threshold, that I might bar the way if he
sought to do you harm. I had fallen asleep, when I
felt you push the door against me. I rolled away; but
not in time. That is all.”
And with solicitous fingers he shook once more his
loosened tooth. The man seemed ashamed to admit
his act of simple doglike loyalty to the master who
that day had saved him from the rattlers' fangs. And
Barry could see he was very evidently telling the truth.
Gale's feelings underwent a sharp revulsion. He
felt as he might have, had he punished Roy for some
act of collie loyalty. He held out his hand.
"I am sorry I hurt you,” said he. "I ask your par-
don, Toni. And I thank you for guarding my door.
You are a white man.”
The Basco reddened under the praise and the hand-
shake. He wriggled like an overgrown schoolboy.
Then it was they noticed that Roy had been scratch-
ing and whining at the closed front door; eager to get
out and to pursue the mysterious interloper. The
sight brought Gale back to a remembrance of his
own purpose in rushing out into the hallway.
"While we've been wasting all this time," he ex-
claimed, “the man's probably gotten away clean. Come
along!"
As he spoke, he caught up one of the three flash-
lights from the hall-table and ran out on the porch;


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with O’Rell and Toni and Chang hard after him.
Roy flashed out, in advance of the men, the instant
the door opened wide enough to let his wiry body
through. With a bark of challenge, the collie gal-
loped around the side of the house, to the single win-
dow of the little living room.
Gale, nearest behind the dog, played his electric
torch over the side yard, in one sweep. No human
figure was revealed by it. But its rays showed a long
stick propped against the shutters' outer catch, with
its lower end braced by the ground.
Such stout shoring would have resisted stronger
pressure than Gale had exerted in trying to force open
the fastened shutter. The simplicity of the trick ap-
pealed to Barry, even in the haste of the moment.
Meantime, Roy had struck the scent of the stranger,
beneath the window, and was casting about, like a
hunting dog, to make sure of it. The ground was soft
from an evening shower. The flashlights played on the
space below the window, where the collie's gold-and-
white body was darting to and fro. Reasonably clear
in the softened ground, were the tracks of two large
brogans.
By the time Gale had caught his first glimpse of
these, the dog had struck the scent he sought. Off he
dashed, nose to ground, hackles abristle, teeth asnarl;
toward the hedge fence which divided the house-yard
from the field to the left.
Through a gap Roy fled, Barry behind him; and
into the field. Thence, at once, he veered sharply to
the left and toward the road. He had reached the


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93
highway and was casting about, once more, for the
scent amid the myriad footprints of beasts and hu-
mans, when Gale whistled him to heel.
"The fellow's clean gone,” said Barry, as the others
came up to where he stood, petting the whimperingly
impatient collie. "No use chasing him for miles down
the public road. Even if Roy should overhaul him,
somewhere out there, we'd have no legal proof he was
the man who prowled around the house. It'd be Roy's
word against his. And juries have a senseless custom
of taking the word of a lying human against the word
of a dog that can't lie.”
But before he went to bed he made a tour of the
home lot and of the barns and other outbuildings.
Everything was in shipshape. Nothing had been
stolen or tampered with. Apparently the intruder had
not so much as visited any part of the place except
the window behind which Barry had been at work.
At the fold, the dwarfish black collie, Zit, was sit-
ting erect and alertly calm, amid billows of drowsing
sheep. These sheep were Zit's lifework. They and
they alone were the objects of the little black dog's
care. Anything and everything else on the ranch
might be in danger; and so long as his beloved sheep
were safe, Zit would not have cared.
Gale left Toni, at the back of the fold, beside the
shed which was the Basco's sleeping quarters.
“Good night, Toni,” said he, as he turned toward
the house. “And thank you, again. But another time
you mustn't lose your good sleep by trying to guard
me. I can take care of myself.”


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BLACK GOLD
"As you will, mon maitre," assented the herder,
with a shrug of the wide shoulders. “A day ago I
would have said the same thing. I would have said:
'Toni Frouchard can take better care of himself than
any other man can take. There is no danger Toni can-
not fight through.' This I would have said. Then,
this afternoon, Toni Frouchard lay helpless and
doomed to death. And he could not save himself.
But you saved him. It is a debt. My father told me
oftentimes that a man can afford to forget all debts,
if need be; except only the debt for his life. And my
father was the wisest man between Roncevalles
and ”
"The debt doesn't exist, man!” said Gale, embar-
rassed at the herder's simple earnestness. “I told you
that, to-day. I took no chance or danger in killing those
rattlers. And I'm not going to have you waste sleep
by watching over me. I'm in no sort of peril. Some
tramp or panhandler saw the light in my living room
and peeked in. That's all."
“Yes, mon maitre," meekly agreed Toni. "As you
will. Yet the man did not seem to me like a way-
farer of the road. I saw him but ill;—scarce more
than his shadow against the weak light of the shut-
tered window. I cannot say if he was tall or short,
fat or thin, white or black. Yet, "
The Basco hesitated; then said, sheepishly:
"But in that faint glimpse, he-he seemed to remind
me,-in his way of crouching and of moving,—to re-
mind me of-of the serpent on my breast this after-


BLACK GOLD
95
noon. B’nuit, mon maitre!” he ended, timidly. "Dormi
bien!"
He yawned prodigiously and slouched into his hut.
Yet he stayed there only long enough to kick off his
boots. Then, picking up his crooked Basque sheath-
knife, he stole back to the house, not ten feet behind
the unsuspectingly strolling Barry.
As soon as Gale had gone inside and shut the door,
for the night, the Basco stretched himself out on the
porch, against the closed front door. There he lay
until gray dawn; sleepless and ever on guard.
Twice, during the night, he arose silently, and pa-
trolled the dooryard; making a circuit of the house,
and then returning to his post on the doormat. Not
until he heard Dick O’Rell stirring in his room, pre-
paratory to setting forth on his treasure quest, did
Toni forsake his vigil and creep back to his own sleep-
ing shed.
An hour later, he replied to Barry Gale's friendly
morning salutation with a surly nod; as the rancher
made his early rounds of the barns and the fold. Not
by sign or by word did the Basco give intimation that
he so much as remembered the somewhat melodra-
matic happenings of the night. Outwardly, he was
the same hulkingly grouchy herder as of old.
Gale came back from his rounds with a royally good
appetite and with a glad zest for the morning's ride
with Maida. With his own hands he had groomed
his roan saddle mare, Señora; until she shimmered
like snowflecked maroon velvet.
This mare was the joy of Barry's heart. She was


96
BLACK GOLD
the get of a famous if pastworthy English hunter, out
of an Arizona bronco 'dam. The blend had made her
tough and wiry, as well as gracefully fleet. It had
also given her a temper which had been the despair of
her Chico breeder; and he had sold her at five years
to Barry Gale for scarce half her true value.
Gale, in less than three months, had turned her into
a splendid saddlehorse; and had softened much of her
vicious temper into mere high spirits. She was still
a handful to manage; and took a lot of riding. But
she and her master were devoted to each other, for
the most part; and Gale was inordinately proud of his
beautiful mount. To-day, she was groomed to the
minute, for Maida Drace's benefit; and her saddle
and headgear were in equally bright condition.
These chores accomplished, Barry was returning
to the house for breakfast.
As he entered the doorway, he paused, attracted by
a rhythmic soft sound that seemed to be drawing nearer
and nearer. Looking out, he saw a man coming slowly
up the front path toward the porch.
The man was clad in severe black and he wore an
immaculate derby hat;-a rarity in that region of
picturesque comfort in worktime dress. He walked
with great deliberation, but with absolute certainty.
In one hand he carried a malacca cane. This he tapped
occasionally on the ground in front of him—in the
light rhythmic fashion that had caught Gale's notice.
The newcomer's eyes were open. But they were
covered with a dead gray film that almost matched in
color his pallid face. It was by these sightless eyes


BLACK GOLD
97
that Gale first recognized his unexpected visitor as
Sludge, the blind valet of Jared Drace.
Barry stood in mute wonder, gazing at the approach-
ing servant; marking the quiet sureness of his unsee-
ing tread and the deftness with which he made his
light cane apprise him of any obstacles in his path.
Sludge was still wearing the felt slippers of the after-
noon before. And by their help his sensitive feet
seemed to sense their way as unerringly as if he had
full vision.
That this blind man should be walking alone and
unguided, several miles from home and along a route
that could not be familiar to him, struck Gale as mi-
raculous. He stepped forward to the edge of the
porch and was about to speak; when Sludge stood
still; and turned one side of his face toward him as if
identifying the sound of Barry's step by dint of
memory.
"Mr. Gale?" inquired the valet, lifting his hat.
“Yes," said Gale; adding inquisitively: "How can
you tell?”
“I remembered your step, sir, from yesterday," an-
swered Sludge. “There is as much difference in steps
as there must be in faces, if a body takes the trouble
to study them. I've had to, sir.”
"How did you get here?” asked Barry, looking up
and down the road for trace of any wagon or car.
"I walked, sir,” said Sludge. “The road is very
fair. I should have been here sooner. But I took the
wrong turning, at the crossroads. I misunderstood
the direction a driver gave me, just before that.”


98
BLACK GOLD
“You walked here?” queried the astounded Barry.
“Alone? Over a strange road?”
As he spoke he recalled instances of his medical
days,-instances of men totally blind who made their
way from city to city and through thronged streets
with comparative ease; guïded, it would seem, either
by some mystic sixth sense or by direct Providence.
"The way was very easy to find, sir,” said Sludge,
as though he had done the simplest thing imaginable.
"I had often come as far as the crossroads. And I
waited there, to-day, till a driver passed by. I asked
him the rest of the journey. If I had not misunder-
stood him and had to ask another man, later, I could
have saved half an hour. I shan't make the same
mistake, next time. I never do,” he finished with a
pathetic touch of pride.
"But how did you know where to turn in?” asked
Barry, a little ashamed of his own boyish curiosity.
"I mean, at what gate?”
"The man told me it was the third gate after I
passed the crossroads,” said Sludge. “I could feel,
with my feet, when I reached any of the gates. The
road at the sides is beaten into a track, by all the feet
that turn in there."
As if wearying of the prolonged talk, he slipped his
sensitive fingers into an inner pocket of his black
coat and drew out a letter, which he handed to Gale.
"Miss Drace wished me to wait for an answer, sir,"
he said.
Barry ripped open the thick envelope and drew out
the single sheet it contained. His hands shook a


BLACK GOLD
99
little, at the memories evoked by this first sight in so
many years of Maida's firm chirography. And he
wondered unhappily if she had written to cancel their
engagement to ride that morning.
“Dear Barry," he read. “Can you be here at nine,
this morning, instead of at ten? I have to be back at
home, a little after eleven, to go for a walk with
Father. And I do so want a good long ride. If you
can't come at nine, suppose we wait till to-morrow?
Will you let me know ? Sludge will bring me your
reply."
Gale looked at his watch.
"Tell her I'll be there at nine," he said. “And can't
I send you back in my runabout? It's a long walk.”
“Thank you, sir," answered the valet. “But I en-
joy walking. It is the only real exercise I get. Thank
you, sir," he said again, touching his hat brim, as
Barry slipped a dollar bill into his hand. “Good morn-
ing, sir.”
He turned and made off, down the path, with that
sure, deliberate stride which, Barry now saw, was less
slow than it seemed.
Gale hurried into the house, bathed, put on riding
clothes, bolted his breakfast, and gave such few direc-
tions as were necessary to his handful of ranch
laborers.
He was absurdly jubilant over the prospect of this
two-hour ride with Maida. He loved California; and
he was proud of this Golden State of his adoption.
It would be good to show off the beauties of the
region to the girl he had lost so long and found again.
S.


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BLACK GOLD
He was glad the morning was so cool, so dazzlingly
clear, so gloriously bracing.
The memories of last night were gone. Gale was
very much in love. To such a man, on the way to keep
a tryst with his sweetheart, it is hard to remember
the bugaboo happenings of midnight. Barry dismissed
the whole queer adventure from his thoughts; and
looked forward only to the morning's happiness in
store for him. It was splendid to be alive!
By a little after half-past eight he was in the saddle;
and his highstrung mare was pirouetting and passaging
as she minced out of the gateway and into the rutted
yellow dirt of the road.
The tingling tonic of the morning air had gotten
into Señora's blood as well as into her master's. She
seemed to find it hard to keep two feet on the ground
at any one time.
Soothing her by laughing words and by patting her
vibratingly arched neck, Barry kept her at a fairly
sober pace, until their dirt road merged into the pave-
ment-smooth State Highway, a mile beyond; the won-
drous gray concrete traffic artery that runs northward
as far as Shasta County and southward until it blends
with the Camino Real and so extends to the Mexican
border itself.
There, guiding Señora into the strip of earth which
bordered the highway, Barry gave the mare her head.
The ground rose at a very gradual slant and the foot-
hold was springy and soft-an ideal stretch for a
gallop.
Señora snorted in glee, as she let herself out in a


BLACK GOLD
101
scurrying canter which at once settled into a sweep-
ingly smooth run.
The spicy cool air whipped the rider's face. The
horse beneath him thundered along at top speed. The
joy of it all surged to his brain. Standing up in his
stirrups, he shouted aloud, for sheer rapture of living.
With the north wind in one's face and the spring
sun in one's eyes, and a grandly galloping horse under
one, on a perfect road, it is hard to be sane and re-
poseful. When every stride of the horse and every
wind of the road bring the rider near and nearer to
the One Girl, sanity may as well give up the unequal
fight.
Spurred on by Barry's blithe shout, Señora gave
herself up to the bliss of the crazy race; her whirlwind
run as smooth in gait as a rocking chair, her tiny ears
laid flat on her outlying neck, her mane flying wild.
Reluctantly, she obeyed the quiet rein-pressure and
the regretful voice of her rider, as she drew near the
corner where the lane-drive leading into the Drace
estate branched off from the concrete highway.
Fidgeting and fretting, Señora slackened her mad
pace to a sedate trot; and turned in at the lane-mouth.
She still trembled a little from the excitement of
the gay run; and once or twice she snorted, in annoy-
ance, at the too-early check to her frolic; slugging her
head forward in a futile effort to get the elusive bit
between her champing white teeth.
“Steady it is, old girl” reproved Barry, smoothing
her neck and thwarting her playful efforts to gain a
teeth-hold on the bit. “Quiet down, now! You'll be


102
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all right, in a minute. And that breather will have
taken the raw edge off you; so you won't make me do
any fighting when I'm out with Her. I've better things
to do, this morning, than to have one of my oldtime
battles with you. That's why I let you run so far and
so hard. . . . So! That's better! A whole lot
better!"
Señora, little by little, forgot her exuberant desire
to keep on running forever. She settled to a peaceful
singlefoot; and she even forbore to shy, affectedly,
when a gray-brown ground-squirrel scuttled across the
lane, under her very nose. Gale was right. The whirl-
wind “breather” had steadied her. Barring some un-
toward happening that might revive her quieted wild
spirits and stir up her uncertain temper, there was
every reason to hope she would complete the day's
exercise with an exemplary calmness.
A twist in the lane brought Gale out into the open
lawnlike space in front of the rambling stone house
which Drace had built here in the hilly forest.
No effort had been made to beautify this clearing.
The lawn was turfless; being covered with a hum-
mocky and wiry growth of grass which had never been
rolled and seldom had been cut. Between hummocks,
patches of bare grayish earth cropped up. A rudely
laid-out and humpy driveway led up to the flat grass-
less space before the front steps.
Be the average northern California home never so
poor, there are about it, almost always, signs of an
effort (generally successful) at beautifying. Flower-
borders gird the doorway. Orange trees or flowering


BLACK GOLD
103
shrubs or roses dot the lawn or dooryard. And climb-
ing roses or, at the very least, the ever-present scarlet
geranium, show that the house's dwellers are seeking
to add to the floral loveliness of their State.
But here there were no more attempts at floriculture
than on the slagheap of a smelting furnace. The
house itself had no architectural fineness or grace. It
was as squat and gray and forbidding as an enormous
toad.
Barry recalled pictures he had seen in a New York
Sunday newspaper of two of Jared Drace's country
homes, one of them in Tuxedo and one at Narra-
gansett,and, remembering the stately elegance and
sumptuously artistic surroundings of both of them,
he marveled afresh at the aspect of this forbidding
and tomb-like abode.
The stables,-a huddle of low buildings that faced
on the courtyard to the rear of the house,—were about
a hundred yards away from the main dwelling. To-
ward these Barry Gale now turned his mare's head;
when he saw no groom was on hand near the house
door to take Señora's bridle from him. He did not
like to leave the warm and nervous horse standing
out in the wind, while Maida was getting ready; and
he sought shelter for her.
But, though he had seen no one, yet apparently he
had been seen. For, as he neared the corner of the
house, along the illkept drive, he heard a man's voice
from somewhere to the rear call out an unintelligible
order. And, at once, a Chinaboy came running for-
ward from the huddle of stables.


BLACK GOLD
105
"I'm just on time, to the minute!” he announced, as
they shook hands. “And behold the Eighth Wonder
of the World—a woman who is also on time, to the
minute! Isn't it a regular made-to-order morning for
a ride?”
"It's perfect!" she declared. “Only I feel like a
criminal, when I think how much time I must be mak-
ing you waste, on a day like this;—when you ought
to be—to be harrowing the oranges and—and paging
the cattle and putting dip on the peachtrees and
"You're a born rancher!” he assured her, noting the
gay effort to hide her discomfort and eager to abet her.
"A born rancher! Only you've got one or two of the
technical terms a little mixed. For instance, it's the
sheep we harrow, not the oranges. We make the
rounds of the orange orchard, every morning, with a
feather duster and a pail of dip; and take down the
oranges and dust or dip them (according to whether
it's the dry or the wet season) and then put them
neatly back on their vines. Then we "
"Then we ride over here and make fun of a poor
tender foot who is trying to learn ranch terms,” re-
proved Maida, with mock displeasure. “Why, even I
'know that oranges don't grow on vines. And a har-
row is-is-well, I'm not quite sure just what it is.
But I'm counting on you to teach me. To teach me
that and lots and lots of other things about California
and about ranching. Shall we start?"
As they came down the front steps, side by side,
Gale saw that a second Chinaboy was waiting for
them, at the drive-edge, along with the first. The sec-


106
BLACK GOLD
ond Celestial was holding by the bridle a daintily-built
little black gelding; which he now led forward and
ranged alongside of Maida.
Gale lifted the girl's slender weight to the saddle;
rejoicing inwardly at the light touch of her hand on
his shoulder and her tiny foot in his palm. Then he
turned to where the other Chinaboy was holding the
fidgety Señora.
“Oh!” Maida cried. “Isn't she a perfect beauty ?
Is she yours?"
"Well,” replied Barry, at thought of some of his
encounters with the temperamental mare, "sometimes
she's mine. And sometimes she decides she's no-
body's. But, for the past few months she's been
slowly developing from a spitfire into a lamb. I never
have any real trouble with her, any more. You see,
she- "
He got no further.
As he had talked, he had taken the rein from the
Chinaboy. Then,—with Youth's eternal yearning to
show off in the presence of a loved one,-he proceeded
to vault in spectacular fashion into the saddle, with-
out touching the stirrups.
He had done this, many times. Señora was accus-
tomed to the manoeuver; and stood quietly enough as
he sprang to her back.
But as he came down into the saddle, she bade quiet-
ness an instant and violent farewell.
Before Gale could find the stirrups, Señora swerved
sharply to one side; then gave a maddened forward
leap; ran a few yards at top speed and checked her
Ne


BLACK GOLD
107
dash by bounding high in air and coming down with
all four small hoofs bunched close together.
The swerve and the forward spring would have been
enough by themselves to unseat a man who was not
looking for such Buffalo Bill Show tactics and whose
feet were not yet in the stirrups. The ensuing buck
was still more disquieting to any hope of staying in
the saddle.
By luck and by native horsemanship, Barry Gale
was able to keep his seat. Gripping the mare with his
muscular thighs, he strove, by voice and by crop, to
steady her.
But Señora was past such simple restraints. Plung-
ing insanely, squirming, pivoting, she fought like a
devil to throw her rider. Her bronco ancestry might
have accounted for the bucking and the pirouettes.
But nothing but panic or agony could have accounted
for most of her lightning evolutions. Back and forth,
up and down, she raged; while the man on her back
battled grimly to keep his seat and to quell her.
Twice she tried to rear and to fling herself back
upon him. Twice, the heavy handle of Barry's crop
caught her rearing head, between the ears, and brought
her down on all fours again.
By every known and unknown method she endeav-
ored to throw him. She even bolted to the house wall
and then passaged swiftly sidewise, striving to scrape
him off against the stones.
Barry, as he fought, had a panoramic lightning
glimpse of the two impassive Chinaboys standing well
out of reach and viewing the entertaining spectacle


BLACK GOLD
109
Naylor, as if for orders. He muttered something. One
after another they slunk back into the stable. And he
followed them back, out of sight, into the farther
recesses of the building.
Barry saw. And the sight confirmed the black sus-
picion that had flashed so illogically into his mind.
He began to understand. And his anger flamed the
hotter. The crazy behavior of Señora's was wholly
unlike the mare's former rebellions, even in the early
days when she had been at her worst.
This was no outcropping of gay spirits; nor was it
a super-exhibition of meanness. The mare was in
agony; and pain had driven her crazy. Again Nay-
lor's grinning amusement and that of the guards came
to the fighting rider's mind;—this and the fact that
Señora had been out of his sight for several minutes
while he was in the house.
The frantic mare spun about in a full circle,
plunged forward with a buck that jolted the rider's
back teeth; and then, with all her force, reared again.
Straight up and backward she hurled herself.
Deftly and with mighty strength the man brought down
the crop's butt between her ears.
But the overstrained wood had cracked, under the
previous blow. Now at the impact, it broke in three
pieces. The shock was too slight to stay the brute's
attempt at rearing.
Up she flung herself; thrashing the air with her
ironshod forefeet, and purposely tumbling backward
as if in a wilful attempt to smash Gale under her
eleven hundred pounds of kicking weight.


110
BLACK GOLD
As she towered above him and toppled backward,
. Barry slipped, eel-like, to one side and sprang to earth;
landing with difficulty upon his feet and just clear of
the descending mare.
The whole battle-royal had lasted a bare half-min-
ute. But Gale felt as if he had been through a Kansas
cyclone. He scarce had presence of mind to leap to
the bridle, as Señora floundered to her feet.
To his surprise she made scant resistance as he
gripped her bit. She was sweating and trembling and
heaving. And her nerves seemed torn to ribbons. But
she did not struggle to escape. She stood quietly,
after the first convulsive backward start.
Barry was examining her bit and running a prac-
tised eye over her foaming mouth and the lathered
sides. He could see no spot that showed signs of
Senora's having been tampered with during his brief
absence. This, and her standing so quietly now he
was no longer on her back, led him to look to the
saddle for an explanation of her antics.
Throwing the bridle over her head,—the oldtime
Western signal to a horse to stand still,he stepped
to the girth and unfastened it. As he undid the cinch
he took care to put no pressure of weight upon the
saddle itself. Yet, light as was his touch, Señora shiv-
ered; and only his sharp command kept her from
lurching forward.
Barry lifted the saddle, straight in air; peering under
it as he did so. The mare's back was flecked with
fresh blood, beneath the center of the saddle cloth. A
closer glance revealed at once the cause.


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BLACK GOLD
bidly, he hoped Naylor might still be there; and that
he might have a few brief minutes, face to face with
the man, out of sight and sound from Maida.
He was willing to take his chances, should any of
the guards try to interfere. Barry, just then, was in
a frame of mind when right blithely he would have
tackled a cohort of professional heavyweights, if also
he might have punished the man who had so needlessly
tortured Señora and had sought the death or the maim-
ing of her rider.
As he advanced, his anger waxed hotter. His swift
stride brought him to the stables and through the low
doorway.
Barry found himself in a big and disorderly har-
ness room. Grouped around the room's two dusty
windows which faced the house were the four guards
he had seen. They had been watching the struggle
from these viewpoints, since Naylor had ordered them
indoors. Leaving the nearest window,-evidently be-
cause of Gale's rapid approach,—was Naylor, himself.
At sight of the man, Gale lost the last remaining
shreds of his temper. Stepping up to Naylor, and
choking with righteous indignation, Barry ripped off
his own coat.
"Take your coat off!” he commanded. “And put
up your hands! You're going to get the thrashing of
your life. Hands up! Unless you want to take a lick-
ing without defending yourself.”
As he spoke, he struck Naylor across the mouth
with his open palm.
Under the blow's whalebone force, the secretary


BLACK GOLD
113
staggered back, a pace. Gale, with fists tight clenched,
followed him up; bracing himself for a furious rush
from his challenged and smitten foe.
To his astonishment, Wolfe Naylor did not attack.
Instead, the man turned and ran. At top speed he
ran to a corner of the room. There, from its hook on
the wall, he snatched a fire-ax. Swinging this aloft, he
whirled around and flew at Barry like a rabid cat.
"Bear witness, all of you!” he shouted, as he leaped
at the unarmed Gale. “Bear witness this man assaulted
me. He is trying to kill me. I am acting in self-
defense.”
And, whirling up his ax, he struck with all his fu-
rious might, at Gale’s bare head. Barry sprang back
from the smashing blow. But the other men had
slipped between him and the door.


CHAPTER FIVE
W HEN and then only did Gale see how completely
1 he was trapped. In front of him was Naylor,
calculatingly homicidal, even in his seeming rage. Be-
hind, four guards barred him from escape by the
door. Unarmed he faced a man resolved on his death
-a muscular and wiry man who wielded an ax.
Even in that stark instant, Barry saw the cleverness
with which Wolfe Naylor had set his trap, when Gale
had blundered into the stable. These guards were his
creatures—ready, doubtless, to swear later on that
Gale had attacked Naylor with some lethal weapon
and that the secretary had been forced in sheer self-
defense, to strike him down.
Meantime, Naylor had brought up the ax for a
second stroke, more cleverly aimed than that first mad
smash which Barry's backward leap had eluded.
The man's little blue eyes were pale with passion.
His lips were tight set. Between them oozed a splash
of blood from Gale's blow. The guards crowded for-
ward, cutting off further chance of retreat.
Cornered, desperate, Barry did not wait for the
ax to fall. Dodging to one side as though in a futile
effort to escape, he flashed in at Naylor, with the
speed of lightning.
The feint served. As Gale dodged, Wolfe Naylor
altered in midair the direction of his descending ax-
114


BLACK GOLD
115
blade; and smote mightily with both hands at the prey
that seemed to be trying to slip past him to the open
space at the rear of the room.
At once, Naylor saw his error; and he sought to
change the direction of the downsweeping weapon.
But he was too late. The whizzingly heavy ax-blade
grazed Gale's shoulder, as the ranchman ran in. And
it shore deep into the wooden floor of the room.
Before Naylor could wrench it free,-almost before
it touched ground, -Barry Gale was at him.
There was no time and there was no scope for box-
ing. What was to be done must be done before Naylor
could lift the ax again;-before any of the guards
coul 1 have a chance to come to the rescue. Football
training of ten years earlier served Gale's turn.
Plunging at Naylor, head down, arms extended, he
caught his antagonist in true tackle-fashion, well below
the loins; whipping both arms about the secretary's
lean legs.
Then, calling on all his strength and skill, Barry
changed in a trice from football player to rough-and-
tumble wrestler. Even as he tackled his man, he drew
his own body into a compact mass; both legs under
him. And, he heaved; driving himself upward with a
herculean shove of the legs and a wrench of shoulders
and arms.
Flying, spreadeagle, Wolfe Naylor sped through the
air, over Gale's heaving left shoulder. The maneuver
was simple and it was not new. But it had been exe-
cuted with bewildering speed and accuracy; and it
had caught Naylor totally by surprise.


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BLACK GOLD
Through the air hurtled the secretary's long body,
arms and legs whirling. Naylor's head was the first
part of him to come in contact with the wall, nearly
five feet away. He crashed into the concrete partition
with an impact which half stunned him. His body
collapsed to the floor and lay there supine and moveless.
Barry Gale did not so much as wait for the luckless
secretary to reach his aërial flight's destination. The
instant he had flung Naylor over his shoulder, he was
once more the scrimmaging football player.
Head down, shoulders hunched, he catapulted into
the least narrow of the gaps, among the four huddled
guards.
What had happened had been done so incredibly fast
that the unprepared men's minds had not had the nim-
bleness to follow it. At one moment their chief had
been rushing on this fated intruder with upraised ax.
The two combatants had crashed together. In prac-
tically the same second, Naylor had flopped through
the air; and a human battering ram was tearing past
them.
Before the jostled quartet had any clear idea of
what had happened, Gale had dashed between two of
them and was through the doorway.
His had been no dime novel exploit of the single
hero who outfights five strong men. Such heroes do
not exist outside the pages of thrilling fiction; as any
real life athlete can testify. He had merely caught
Naylor offguard by an old football trick; and had fol-
lowed this by escaping before the leaderless guards
could grasp the situation's sudden change.


BLACK GOLD
117
Out through the doorway he sprang. Then he came
to an abrupt halt in his flight. Maida Drace had fol-
lowed him across the space from the house. And he
all-but collided with her as he gained the safety of
the open.
He heard the men hurry to the doorway after him.
He heard the irresolute shuffle of their feet as they
came to a hesitant stop at sight of the girl. He did not
look around. He knew these mercenaries would not
follow into the light of day and into the presence of
one or more witnesses. For the time, at least, the
incident was closed.
"I came over to tell you I got some salve, from the
house," Maida was saying, "and I put it on your poor
little horse's back. So don't bother looking longer
around here for grease. Are you sure you can fix
the saddle-cloth so it won't hurt her to be ridden?”
“Indeed I can,” he assured her. “You're not going
to miss your ride, just for a burr. And I'm not,
either."
He was grateful that Maida attributed his flushed
face and hurried breathing to his recent tussle with
Señora. And he hastened to lead the way back, toward
the horses, lest some word or other sound from the
harness room give her an inkling of what had just
gone on in there.
"You couldn't get what you went for?" she asked
him as they moved, side by side, in the direction of
the two mounts.
She glanced at his hands, seeming to expect that


118
BLACK GOLD
he might be carrying a pot of axle-grease. "Didn't
they— ?"
"Oh,” he answered, lightly, “they were ready and
eager to give me all I wanted,—and more. But it
wasn't quite what I had gone there to get. So I
came away."
"You have splendid control of your horse!" Maida
praised him. “I never saw better riding, while "
“While it lasted ?" he hazarded. “Thanks. But if
I'd known what ailed Señora, I'd have cut short the
exhibition, the first second, by dismounting. That was
all she really wanted me to do. She couldn't say it in
words. So she said it in drastic fashion with every
inch of her body. Let's forget about it, shan't we?"
he went on, as he adjusted the saddle-cloth, nicking a
hole in it above the scratch. “I'm only sorry it startled
you. Honestly, I don't give a roughriding exhibition
every time I happen to be on any one's lawn. I think I
can promise it won't happen again."
As he said it, he recalled the thwack of Wolfe Nay-
lor's head against the concrete. And he felt fairly
well justified in believing the trick on Señora was not
likely to be repeated.
He did not trouble himself as to the possible extent
of Wolfe's injury. He was quite certain he had not
killed the fellow. And, for any injury to him short
of that, Gale was human enough to be glad.
But a slight qualm crept over him as he visualized
what must have been his own fate, had he been a
fraction of an instant less quick, in eluding the ax's
vicious swing. And, to make himself forget what


BLACK GOLD
119
had so nearly happened, he began to talk fast and
at random.
"Look !” said he, as they debouched into the State
Road, from the lane. “Do you see that hill, over
yonder? Well, that's where we're going first. From
the summit, you can see the kingdoms of the earth.'
At least you can see the ranch kingdom of O’Rell
and Gale. And about a thousand or a million square
miles of the most beautiful scenery on earth, besides.
Are you good for a cross-country canter ?”.
For reply, she flicked her black horse, and cleared
the ditch into the field beyond. Then, leading the way,
she cantered up the slope toward the hill he had pointed
out.
He was neck and neck with her as the horses toiled
pluckily up the last steep furlong of the rise. Then,
with a wave of his arm, he cried :
“There it is! All the world at our feet.”
Maida gave a little gasp of wordless appreciation,
as she gazed about her at the panorama that spread
out below them and on every side.
"There, to north and there again to eastward,” ex-
plained Gale, "are the two giant guardians of this
valley and of the lands above. Two eternal snow-
crowned giants, looking down on the wonders beneath
them. The giant to the north,” he expounded, raising
his hand to where, far in front of them a tremendous
snow-shrouded mountain reared its dazzling white
bulk to the soft blue heavens, "is Mount Shasta. It's a
good deal more than seventy miles away from us. But
on days like this, it doesn't look ten miles off. That's


BLACK GOLD
121
ised. “I elect myself, here and now, your “Seeing
Northern California' guide. It's worth seeing. Better
worth seeing than almost any other part of the world.”
"I've been in Southern California, of course," she
answered. “I've been there, twice. But never north
of- "
"Southern California was made by man,” he said,
oracularly. "And a beautiful and artistic and spec-
tacular joy he made of it. But Northern California
was made by God. And His work, as always, is ten
times finer than man's. Tourists swarm through the
southern part of the State. And not one of them in
fifty ever bothers to come as far north as this. It's
their loss. There's nothing lovelier, anywhere. Do
you know why I asked you if you'd ever heard of
Mount Lassen?" he broke off, checking his enthusiasm
and harking back to the earlier subject.
"No," she returned, puzzled at the query. “Ought
I to have heard of it?"
"All Americans ought to have heard of it, as far
back as when they were in school,” said he, “and not
one per cent of them ever have. Every one has heard
of Stromboli and Etna and Vesuvius and "
"But those are volcanoes,” she objected. “And
somehow people are always more interested in such
deadly things as volcanoes than in humdrum mountains
that don't have craters and eruptions."
"See any clouds in the sky, to-day?" he inquired
with seeming change of theme.
"Why,—no," she returned, her glance sweeping the
flawlessly azure skies, "none, anywhere. Except,-


122. BLACK GOLD
yes, I see that queer little cluster of whitey-gray
clouds hanging just above Mount Lassen. Those are
the only ones.”
"Does it seem odd, at all,” he asked, "that the only
clouds on this perfect day, should cluster around one
mountain top? The reason is,-Mount Lassen is a
volcano."
“No!"
“The only active volcano in the United States !” he
made proud answer, as though the mountain belonged
to him. “And not a handful of people in the East
have ever so much as heard of it. They travel to Italy
to gaze on Vesuvius. And yet here in their own coun-
try is an active volcano every bit as impressive and
probably with as much potential deadliness as Vesuvius.
Queer, isn't it? A thing is of tremendous interest,-
as long as it happens to be in some foreign land.”
Maida was eyeing the snowy expanse of mountain-
top with new and keen curiosity.
“And those are really volcanic clouds,-volcanic
vapors,-above it?" she asked.
“Yes. Sometimes they hang like that for days
and nights. Sometimes the crater is quiet and there's
not even a wisp of smoke above it. Then,-especially
before an eruption,—that graying crown of clouds
shows out. I've seen only one real eruption of Lassen,
since I've been here. That one was a beauty. In our
ranch dining-room hangs the 'Vulcan Head' photo-
graph of one of the biggest eruptions of late years.
I spoke to you about the sulphur tinge in some of the
water,-up by Iron Canyon, for instance. And you


BLACK GOLD
123
must have noticed the volcanic rocks scattered over that
ridge, yesterday. Well, where you find sulphur in the
water and volcanic rocks and then a real live volcano in
the middle distance, you may know, pretty accurately,
that you're in a country where eruptions were once a
lot bigger and more violent than they are now.”
“Are the eruptions ever dangerous ?" she questioned,
her fascinated gaze still held by the snowy mountain.
"Not in recent centuries,” he reassured her. “And
scientists have proved they can never again be powerful
enough to devastate any part of this region. But,-
well, a lively eruption, in company with a lively little
California earthquake, might some time do a good bit
of damage to things that weren't anchored pretty firmly.
That's just my own theory," he hastened to add.
"Wiser people hereabouts would laugh at it.”
"I do hope it won't happen while I'm out here!" she
exclaimed, fervently. "- ".
"Don't worry!" he adjured. “There'll never be an
earthquake in this part of the State, heavy enough to
do any general damage. ... See those twin moun-
tains, between us and Lassen ?” he continued. “Those
are Tuscan Peaks. Up along their lower slopes is an
immense tract of government grazing land. I send my
sheep up there in summer, when all these lower pastures
are parched and when the mercury, down at Red Bluff,
gets to coquetting between 110 and 116. The govern-
ment lets us graze our livestock out there and on a
lot of other tracts. So much, per head, by the season.
Even the biggest ranchers make use of it, nowadays.
You see, the day of the enormous ranges is passing.


124
BLACK GOLD
People and companies that used to own ten or fifteen
or twenty thousand acres are finding it more profitable
to split up the bulk of their holdings into smaller
ranches and sell them. It's cheaper to rent grazing
privileges from the government than to carry so much
land as they used to. And to pikers like Dick O’Rell
and myself, it's a genuine boon."
He glanced apologetically at her, fearing she might
he bored by his shoptalk. But she was listening with a
very genuine interest. And, eager to speak of his life-
work to this girl who meant everything to him, he con-
tinued :
"But livestock is only a side issue with Dick and
myself, just now. We're centering our powers on rice.
In this part of the State, for the moment, rice is king."
"Rice?" she repeated. “Why, I thought that grew
in the tropics.”
"It does,” said Gale. "And it grows here, too. In
fact, it grows as far north as Shasta County. There's
a fine big rice-paddy, up near Redding. There's a lot
of excitement about cotton, in some parts of California,
too. But rice is the new gold-fever, hereabouts. The
flood tide of it set in, after a Hindu came over here,
and cleared up $150,000, from a mere shoestring, by
growing rice for three years on leased land. Then a
couple of youngsters from Sacramento borrowed $500
and went into the rice game, hereabouts; and netted
$23,000 on the deal.”
“On $500 capital?" she asked'in wonder.
“There have been bigger profits on smaller outlay,"
said Barry. “The old yarns of the miners who found


BLACK GOLD
125
fortunes in gold are being dwarfed by the rice-stories.
Dick and I are going in for it, strong, while the going
is still good. For, I don't suppose it can last forever.
But while the rice prices and rice demand stay up,
it's a bonanza for us. We had a tract of hardpan that
was just a sheep range. No ordinary crop would grow
on it. We leased a tract next to it; and built our levees
and went to work. It cost us about $37 an acre for
plowing and seeding and irrigating and for every other
expense. And, the very first year,—that was year
before last,—we averaged 3,400 pounds of rice to the
acre. We did still better, last year; and we ought to
do nearly as well, this. Next year we'll get nothing
out of our old paddies; and that's why we've made
new ones. You see, about every third or fourth year,
the water-grass gets such a hold that the crop is choked
to death. That and the trouble in getting the right
amount of irrigation. But when we get the Iron Can-
yon Dam project through, we'll have irrigation for five
counties. By that time the bottom may have fallen out
of the rice market. Or the 'red rice may have gotten
the best of the crops. You see, all farming is the
most stupendous gamble on earth. But it's also the
one gamble where grit and brain can stem the tide of
ill luck. That's what makes it so fascinating. I'm
boring you to extinction with this gassing of mine about
a subject that can't possibly interest you," he finished
contritely.
"You are not boring me,” she said, simply. “And
I wish you wouldn't say you are. I'm enough of a
Primitive Human to love a struggle. That's why I


BLACK GOLD
127
dog trotted between them and the sheep he was
guarding.
One or two of the more timid animals had already
looked up from their grazing, at sight of the riders;
and began to huddle and to mill, as if preparatory to a
run. But the tiny black dog yawned prodigiously and
stretched himself out on the ground in front of the
flock, as if for a snooze in the warm sunlight.
Seeing their guardian taking so uninterested an atti-
tude toward the mounted intruders, the worried sheep
decided the riders were nothing to be scared about.
And they resumed their nibbling of the short gray-
green grass. Which was precisely the effect the wily
little sheepdog had intended to produce by his clever
acting.
“Isn't it all glorious !” sighed Maida in rapture. “The
wonderful mountain wall on every side, with Lassen
and Shasta so shiningly bright above them all;-and
then the blue of the sky and the sage-green of the grass
and the tumbled masses of gray-white sheep and that
gigantic shepherd over yonder keeping watch on them?
It's something to remember, forever."
Catching his employer's eye, Toni bowed im-
pressively, from the far end of the field; concentrating
his curious dark-browned gaze on the fair girl at his
employer's side and drawing truly romantic conclusions
from the spectacle.
Gale was about to suggest that they ride over to him,
when a scampering commotion at a far corner of the
field interrupted his half-spoken words.
That corner of the pasture abutted on a dense thicket


128
BLACK GOLD
of chapparal which ran back to where the undergrowth
of the woods, behind, blended with it. A few score
sheep had been grazing there, apart from the bulk of
the flock. Now, with common consent, this bunch of
stragglers threw up their heads and broke into a wild
stampede; hoofbeats and bleats mingling in a chorus
of terror.
Away from that chapparal copse they fled, at top
speed. Nor did they rejoin the main flock, which lay
at right angles to them. Instead, they stampeded
directly from the copse and toward the road.
In a flash, little Zit was after them. His squat
black body fairly flew along the rising ground. From
his course, it seemed to the onlookers that he must surely
cut through the very center of the raggedly galloping
throng.
But the wise sheepdog knew better than did these
with the unerring judgment of distance and direction
that is inherent with his breed. Instead of smiting the
midst of the stampede, he struck its farthest and rag-
gedest corner, lining the stragglers into close formation
as he went.
Then, whipping around in front of them, he turned
them as compactly as though they were a column of
cavalry and headed them back for the main flock. Once
behind them and having headed them aright, he dropped
to a wolflike trot, weaving from side to side of the
rear rank to round up any strays, but slackening speed
in order to encourage the sheep to do the same.
As a result, the bunch had come down to almost a


BLACK GOLD
129
walk, before reaching their fellows, and a few had even
begun to graze. Their advent, thus, was so gradual
and non-sensational that it did not rouse any excitement
at all in the main body. Had they continued their first
speed and come charging down on the flock, the com-
pact and content mass would have disintegrated into
two thousand scattering units. And Zit would have
had his work cut out for him, for the best part of the
next hour.
Having brought back the strays and circumvented
an incipient wholesale panic, the little black dog loped
off to the corner of the field whence the sheep had
galloped; and proceeded to investigate the cause of
their Aight.
He crossed the gray-green expanse and came to the
chapparal copse. Into this he wriggled his stocky body
and on through it, until he was lost to sight by Gale
and the girl.
"What do you suppose scared them so ?” Maida
asked. “They ran as if-
"Nobody ever knows what scares a sheep," answered
Barry. "If it isn't one thing, it's another. If it isn't
one thing or another, then they're perfectly capable of
stampeding at nothing at all. If there is anything on
earth stupider and timider than a sheep, I never heard
of it. That bunch were probably not frightened by
anything. They just took it into their fool heads to
stampede. I don't suppose there's anything more for-
midable than a jack-rabbit hidden in that copse. By
the way, the railroad men, out here, call the big jack-
rabbits 'narrow-gauge mules! I- "


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BLACK GOLD
A sharp yelp of pain from Zit interrupted his homily.
Then followed another and louder cry from the dog.
And, presently, the little fellow emerged from the copse,
limping and whining; and made straight for Toni, for
protection.
As he passed close by Gale and Maida, they saw his
back was bleeding as from the welt from a heavy whip
or stick and that he dragged one foot painfully as
he ran.
“Some one in there pitched onto the poor little chap,
as he was searching !" cried Gale. “The same 'some
one' who scared the sheep. Wait, here, please! I'll be
right back.”
He headed Señora for the chapparal and sent her
across the field at a run. Toni, from his own nearer
section of the field had already noted the condition of
his cherished dog; and he was making for the copse
with seven-league strides of his long legs. Above his
head he brandished the stout staff he carried. And
from his bearded lips he spat forth a whirring volley
of patois curses on the assailant of his Zit.
Into the copse, from opposite sides, dashed Barry
and the Basco. In its center they met, scratched and
battered by prickly branches; but having caught no
glimpse of any interloper. Nor did a ten-minute beat-
ing of the copse, from end to end, bring any better
results.
At last, leaving Toni to tend his man-handled pet,
Maida and Barry left the pasture and rode on.
"What could it have been ?” asked the giri, for the


BLACK GOLD
131
second time. "Couldn't you find any trace to help you
guess ?”
"No," said Gale, masking his perplexed annoyance as
best he might. "No trace at all. There was a broken
twig here and there; but nothing further. The fellow
had a good start. He could have gotten back through
the chapparal into the woods; and so away before we
reached the copse. Probably it was some tramp, drows-
ing there; whose sight or scent frightened the sheep
and who resented being waked by Zit. He hit the
little fellow with his stick and kicked him; and then
made off before we could run him in for trespassing.
"See those ground squirrels playing over there?” he
broke off, switching the subject. “Sometimes, in a
long ride, you'll see perhaps fifty of them, sitting on
posts or crossing the roads. They're pretty nearly
our worst pests. It's good-by to the orchard they take
a fancy to. We poison them and we shoot them and
we trap them. But we don't make much headway. In
some places you'll see signs, adorned with skulls and
cross-bones, and exhorting ranchers to make a cam-
paign against them. Down along parts of the Camino
Real, I've seen as many as twenty ground squirrels, in
less than five miles, lying dead in the road where cars
had run over them as they were crossing from one
field to another. They-
“Barry,” accused the girl, "you're worried over that
adventure in the copse, back yonder. And you are talk-
ing about other things, to make light of it. I'm not a
kindergarten child, to be kept from sharing the annoy-
ing things of life. You and I are such old friends!


132
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ver
And friends ought to be partners in bad luck as well
as in good. What do you suppose was in that copse?
It isn't likely that the sheep should have run away, just
because a tramp was asleep there. And a tramp would
not have had any grudge against that poor puppy, to
treat him so cruelly. What was it?"
"I don't know," said Barry. “But it's nothing to
bother about.”
“There is so much, lately, that I don't know !" she
sighed, the look of unhappiness coming back to her deep
eyes. "And so much to 'bother about! I hate mys-
teries. I hate them! And ever since I've been in Cali-
fornia, I'm hemmed in by them. Barry, I'm so wor-
ried about Father! He isn't one bit as he used to be.
It isn't like him to turn himself into a hermit; and
to brood alone, by the hour; and have long secret con-
ferences with Wolfe Naylor; and hide himself from
the whole world. He used to love to have people
around him and to get every bit of enjoyment out of
life. Now he shuts himself up in that dreary barracks
in the wilderness and bars every one out. I've asked
him about it, again and again. But he always puts me
off and declares it's nothing at all and that he's taking
a rest cure. Rest cure! Why, just look at him!
He's turning into an old man. And he never rests.
What can it mean, Barry? And in a sweet, peaceful,
hospitable region, like this, why should he surround
himself with twenty or more armed guards? He
doesn't need protection. He hasn't done anything
wrong. He has no enemies. What does it all mean?”
"I don't know," answered Gale, soberly. "And,


BLACK GOLD
133
while it's none of my business, I've been wondering
the same thing. I wish there were something I might
do to make life pleasanter and easier for you, while
you're here. Why don't you go back, East, away from
it all? It can't be pleasant for you to be mured up
here, with no friends and no amusements.”
"That's what Father says," she replied. "He wants
me to go back. He didn't even seem glad to see me;
when I came out here as a surprise for him. But he is
in trouble of some kind. And he is thousands of miles
away from his own people. I'm not going to leave him.
I couldn't be happy, going back home and remembering
how miserable and lonely he is. My place is here."
"I wish I might be of use," said Barry. "If ever I
can be, you don't need to be told how glad I'll be if
you'll call on me for anything."
"I do know it, Barry,” she said gratefully. "And
I'm ever so much less lonesome and blue and desolate,
now that I've met you again. Honestly, I am. Only,
everything is so queer and so different. There's Wolfe
Naylor, for instance."
"Naylor?” he asked, seeking to speak indifferently.
“Your father's secretary? What about him?”
"He's so different from what he was, back at home,”
she complained. "He's been with Father for nearly
four years. And he was such a quiet, efficient, severely
correct, respectful automaton; till he came out here. He
was the perfect, machine-like private secretary; like the
ones on the stage and in books. That was the way I
remembered him. I hadn't seen him for the best part
of a year, till I came to California, last month. And


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I'd never have known him as the same man. He's
grown so arrogant and so—so familiar ;-and almost
as if he owned the estate himself.”
"Is he discourteous to you?” demanded Gale, sharply.
"If he is "
"No, no. He's very nice indeed to me. He puts
himself out to be nice to me and to try to make life
pleasant. He's always at my elbow with some sug-
gestion for my comfort or amusement. But — Oh,
well, he's different, that's all! It's just one more
mystery.”
"No," denied Gale. "It's part of the same mystery.
I'd stake my life on that. Whatever the mystery may
be."
But he was wise enough not to say it aloud.
“Then,” pursued Maida, shifting her ground with
dismaying suddenness, "then, Barry, there's—there's
-you!"
"I ?” he queried, in preplexity.
“Yes,” she insisted. "That's another mystery. And
you won't solve it for me. When I asked you, yester-
day, why you dropped out of my life so suddenly, four
years ago, without giving me any explanation at all,
you put me off and said you couldn't tell me. I sup-
pose I ought either to be deeply offended by your
saying that; or else I ought to accept it with childlike
meekness. But I can't do either. I want you to tell
me, Barry. Won't you? It worries me. It's worried
me for years. You and I were such good pals, and
we had such beautiful times together, there in Balti-
more. And then, all at once you dropped me and "


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135
"No!” he denied, vehemently. "No! Don't say
that. I didn't 'drop' you, Maida. No sane man could
ever 'drop' you!"
"No?” she laughed, to cover the odd little thrill
that tingled through her at his earnestness of words
and look. “Then what else was it?"
For an instant he made no reply, but rode with down-
cast eyes and with so troubled a face that Maida half-
repented her question. Then, speaking slowly, and with
face still averted, he said:
"I went away from you because I had to. There
was no mystery about it. Nothing but heartache; so
far as I was concerned. And I crossed the Continent.
Then, through no volition of either of us, we are to-
gether again. ... Do you happen to remember the
old Syrian tale of Sheik Ben Ysouf? As the Sheik
slept on the roof of his Jerusalem house, he heard, in a
vision, Allah, the Most High, say to the Death Angel :
'Take thy sword and smite Ben Ysouf, the Sheik!
Ben Ysouf waited to hear no more. He rose and fled
from his house and from Jerusalem. Nor did he check
his flight until he reached the gate of Damascus; five
days' journey to northward. And there in the gateway
of Damascus, stood the Death Angel. And the Angel
said to the Sheik: 'It is well that you are come to
Damascus, oh Ben Ysouf. For it was here that the
Most High bade me slay you!”
"It's a queer story," commented Maida, after a
brief silence. “And I suppose it makes sense. But I
don't quite see the connection. I hope you don't hint
that I'm the Death Angel waiting for you on the other


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side of the world from where I first met you?” she
finished, with an effort at lightness.
"I gather," he evaded, "that the story means a man
can't escape his fate by running away from it. Let it
go at that, shan't we? There is the first of my rice
paddies, there to the left. Just beyond that yellow
bank. That's part of our levee system. And now I
want to show you the oranges. We won't have time
for much more, if we're to get you back home by eleven.
If you aren't too busy, perhaps you'll let me take you
down to Red Bluff, some day soon? It's a mighty
worthwhile town. And the ride is fine. May I come
over to-morrow morning for you?”.
“Yes, indeed !" she assented, gladly; then her face
clouded a little, as she added: “That is, if Father
doesn't need me, to-morrow morning. To-day, just
before you came, I went into his study to tell him you
and I were going for a ride. And he said he needed
me there, to help him docket some papers, because Mr.
Naylor was to be busy on some other work. I told
him he had said he wouldn't need me till eleven. And
he—he almost lost his temper. At last, he told me to
go ahead; but to consult him before I made any more
engagements. Wasn't that a queer thing for him to
say to me? He never spoke so, before. Oh, there's
so much that's changed and—and puzzling !".
As Barry Gale cantered off down the rough driveway,
after leaving her at the foot of the Drace veranda,
Maida handed her mount to one of the Chinaboys, to
take to the stables. Then she climbed the veranda
steps and stood gazing down the drive at the vanishing


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137
rider. Her eyes were strangely misted; and a wistfully,
happy little smile played about her soft lips.
As Barry disappeared around the bend, she turned
to go into the cheerless house. Directly behind her,
Wolfe Naylor was standing.
So silently had he come out from the house that
Maida was not aware of his nearness, until now she
confronted him, face to face. She hesitated, expecting
him to stand aside for her to pass indoors. But he
held his ground.
His small blue eyes were fixed on hers, with an odd
intentness she had noted in them more than once since
her arrival in the West. And he made no move to let
her go by him into the house.
"Pleasant ride?” he queried, abruptly.
“Very, thanks," she made answer.
“I think Mr. Drace would rather you didn't go riding
with young Gale," he went on. "In fact, I'm sure of it.
He said as much, after you left.”
Maida stared at him, in wondering disapproval of
his impertinence. Then, stiffly, she said:
"My father can tell me of his wishes, himself, Mr.
Naylor; and not through his secretary. I am sorry he
thought fit to discuss my affairs with you. I am going
in to dress, now. May I trouble you to let me by?”
Wholly ignoring the snub, Naylor kept his position
in front of her. Into his cheeks,—which were un-
wontedly pallid and sickly from his head's contact with
the partition wall, -crept a dull red. His eyes
smoldered.
"I am glad you said that,” he returned, choosing his


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words carefully, yet speaking as though resolved that
nothing should turn him from his purpose. “I am glad,
because it gives me a chance to tell you why I ventured
to interfere. It is because your welfare means more
to me than anything else in the world. Because,” his
forced calmness forsaking him, swept away by a fierce
ardor that suddenly obsessed him, “because you mean
more to me than anything else. Because I love you,
Maida !—I love you!"
For an instant, the girl stared up at him in speechless
amaze; doubting if she had heard aright. But his
flushed cheeks and convulsively working lips and blaz-
ing little eyes were proof enough.
"I love you!” he was repeating, over and over. "I
meant to wait longer,—to wait till,—till the right time,
-before I told you. But when I saw how Gale looked
at you last evening,—when I saw "
“There is no need to speak of Mr. Gale,” she checked
his fierce outburst. “I am sorry,—very, very sorry,
you said all this, Mr. Naylor. Shan't we both try to
forget it, please?"
Again, she made as though to pass him and go in-
doors. But, stung past all his hard-held self-control
by her answer, the man caught her hungrily in his arms
and crushed her slender body to his breast.
His lips sought hers, and he was panting incoherent
love words as he rained kisses on her head and brow.
Then, her moment of paralyzed incredulity passed;
and she was herself again.
With all her vigorous young strength she wrenched
herself free and shrank back from him with a look


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139
whose utter loathing even the love-crazed Naylor could
not fail to read.
Before she could speak, his arms were about her
again. She beat fiercely at his chest and struggled in
sick horror to free herself. But his strength was thrice
as great as hers.
find you can't fight against me. You're mine. Forever
and ever!”


CHAPTER SIX
ATTLING madly, silently, Maida sought to free
herself from the embrace that sickened her very
soul with a sense of loathing degradation.
She had been able to keep her face averted from
Naylor's avid attempts to kiss her lips. But, fight as
she would, she lacked the power to free her struggling
body from the clasp of his wiry arms.
And now, pinioning both her arms with one of his
own, Wolfe Naylor,—still babbling wild love-words,-
caught her head with his free hand and strove by sheer
strength to turn it so that her face should be his to kiss.
Feeling herself unable to resist the agonizing
pressure, Maida, in crazed desperation, drove her white
teeth deep in the fleshy part of the man's palm. The
pain and suddenness of the bite made him recoil for
the briefest instant.
In that infinitesimal moment, Maida tore free from
him and sprang toward the door. At once he was after
her; and in a single bound had caught up with the
girl as her hand was on the doorknob.
At his clutch on her shoulder, Maida whirled about
and lashed him across the face with her riding crop;
striking with all the force of panic terror.
Naylor reeled back; both hands clapped to his bleed-
ing visage. Maida took advantage of the instant's
respite to fling open the front door and to dash into
the house.
140


BLACK GOLD
141
She was about to slam and bolt the door behind her,
before Naylor could follow. But as she sprang into
the hallway, she saw her father emerging from his
study.
"You're late," began Jared Drace, in dry reproof.
"I asked you to be back by-
"Father !” she sobbed in hysteric fright, rushing up
to Drace and flinging her arms about his neck, for
protection. "Father! Wolfe Naylor-he tried to kiss
me! He caught me in his arms and wouldn't let me
go! I had to strike him with this crop to make him
loose me! He !"
Naylor came in as she spoke; and with a shudder
the terrified girl clung closer to her father. The secre-
tary's lips and cheekbone were bruised and bleeding
from the slash of the crop. But in his eyes still gleamed
that wild flame of eagerness. Nor did he hesitate at
sight of his employer; but stood returning Drace's
look of stark indignation.
"You hear what my daughter says, Naylor!" rasped
Drace, furiously. “If you've any excuses or apologies,
make them as quickly as you can; and then get out of
my house and out of my employ.”
"I told Miss Drace I loved her," answered Naylor,
unflinchingly. “And I repeat it. I love her. And I
ask her to be my wife.”
"Your—your wife?" shrilled Drace, in keen disgust.
“Yes," retorted Naylor. "My wife. I love her and
I want to marry her. What is more," he continued
with a quiet intensity that sent a new thrill of terror
through the listening girl, “what is more, I am going


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to marry her. Preferably with your consent, Mr.
Drace. But, if necessary, without it. I get what I
want. And I want to marry Maida. Please under-
stand it, clearly. I think that is all there is to be said
about it."
For a space, Maida feared her father might be
going to have an attack of apoplexy. Jared Drace, as
he listened to Naylor's calm avowal, shook from head
to foot. The dry and withered aspect of his face gave
way to a wave of color that enpurpled his lean cheeks
and lent him an air of youth. His old eyes blazed with
rage. His fists clenched; and, but for Maida's cumber-
ing weight against his breast, he would have flown at
the tall and muscular man so much his junior and so
infinitely his physical superior.
Maida, through all her fear for him, was comforted
and proud that this father of hers had come out of his
strange self-absorption in her hour of need and was her
gallant champion against the beast who had laid hands
on her.
Father and child were closer together in soul and
heart than they had been for many a long day. Jared
Drace had risen from the withered and introspective
shell which had of late encompassed him. And once
more he was a man-a man and a father.
"You have fifteen minutes," he said, when he could
master his angry voice into coherence, "you have just
fifteen minutes to pack and clear out. When you are
ready, come to my study and I will give you a check
for three months' services. I shall not give you a rec-
ommendation of any kind. Remember, you are to be


BLACK GOLD
143
out of my house in fifteen minutes. If you are not,
I shall order the guards to eject you by force. I- "
"The guards?" queried Naylor; and he laughed.
It was a genuine laugh of amusement; tinged with a
certain conscious superiority.
“The guards? Very good, sir. Just as you wish.”
He nodded, and walked past them, through the hall,
to his own quarters at the rear of the house.
"The swine !" raged Drace, glowering after him.
“The presumptuous puppy! Because, out here, I've
put certain certain responsibilities on his shoulders
and admitted him more to my confidence and society,
he has the idea he can make love to my daughter and
-and embrace her against her will; and then carry it
off with that mock-superior air of his! Well, you
heard me give him his walking papers. I can vouch for
it, he'll never annoy you again, little girl of mine!
Dad's so sorry you had this fright!"
He stooped and kissed the flushed and grateful face
she lifted so lovingly to him. Then, patting Maida on
the shoulder, he said:
"It's been slow for you, little daughter, in this lonely
house. I'm sorry I was cross, about your going riding,
to-day. We must try to give you better times, after
this; and not let you mope about with no one to talk to.
Besides, now that I've kicked Naylor out, I shall have
to impress you into service, now and then, as my sec-
retary, till I can replace him."
He frowned at something conjured up by his own
words; and repeated, fretfully:
“Till I can replace him!”


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through the transom glass. Not realizing that she was
gazing on what was not intended for her to see, she
stood, rapt and incredulous.
Jared Drace sat huddled low in his great desk-chair,
his face in his hands, his whole body quivering as with
a chill. He was a right pitiful figure,—spineless,
beaten, terrified.
Above him, seated on one corner of the table, towered
Wolfe Naylor. The secretary was talking ;-calmly,
authoritatively ;-his lean face wearing a half-smile.
Though the closed transom-glass prevented Maida
from hearing a word Naylor was saying, yet there
was no mistaking the import of the scene. An hour
earlier, Jared Drace had ordered this man out of his
house in disgrace. Now, the secretary not only had
not obeyed that command, but he was very evidently
master of the situation. And Drace was all-but grovel-
ing before him, in humiliation and fear.
Rooted to the stair, Maida stood moveless and wide-
eyed, for minutes; as Naylor talked on. Then she
saw her father lift his face from his hands, and turn
a terror-blanched face of utter cowed misery on his
secretary.
Drace said something, his twitching fingers clasped
in apparent appeal. Naylor laughed, reassuringly; and
slapped his employer on the back in boisterous good-
fellowship. The old man winced and cowered under
the coarse familiarity; but resented it in no way.
With a sob, Maida came to herself; and rushed up
to her own room; locking herself in. All her world, -
her beautiful world with its myriad recent promises


BLACK GOLD
147
of happiness to come,—was crashing down about her
ears. She could not understand anything of what she
had seen. It did not make sense to her. And her
efforts to solve the puzzle only numbed her power to
think with any clearness.
Out of the chaos, at last, one fact stood out clear.
Whatever the meaning of the sight she had just
witnessed, she remembered that her father had ordered
Naylor from the house and had told her the secretary
was to go. Drace was ever a man of his word. If
he had said Naylor was to go, then assuredly Naylor
was going.
Moreover, it was not to be thought of that her
father would tolerate in his house a man who so grossly
had insulted his daughter. True, Naylor had not gone
in the prescribed fifteen minutes. But, undoubtedly,
he would go as soon as he had completed that strange
interview she had unconsciously spied upon.
Thus, when luncheon was announced, she went un-
hesitatingly down to the dining room, certain the secre-
tary would be gone. But he had not gone.
He and Drace were just seating themselves at the
lunch table, when Maida came into the room. Drace
looked like a man who has just passed the crisis of a
mortal illness. Naylor was debonairly serene. His
face, in spite of the welt from Maida's crop-slash, wore
an aspect of smug contentment.
As Maida appeared in the doorway, Naylor sprang
up from his seat and, waving aside the Chinaboy, drew
back her chair for her. As he did so he turned on her
a smile of loverly welcome.


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For a moment Maida stood, transfixed with unbe-
lief and horror; while Naylor smiled invitingly at her
and Jared Drace guiltily avoided her indignant ques-
tioning eyes. Then, turning to the stolid Chinaboy,
she said:
“You may bring my lunch up to my rooms.”
The next instant, she was gone. And the men heard
the light tread of her feet on the stairs. Then came
the sound of her room door closing.
When the Chinaboy bore the luncheon tray upstairs,
Maida Drace was lying across her bed, weeping heart-
brokenly. At the servant's tap on the door, she fought
down the tears and called to him:
"I've changed my mind, Chu Fing. I shan't want
any lunch, to-day.”
Half an hour later, as she was bathing her swollen
eyes, there was another rap on the door. And Jared
Drace's voice called timidly:
“May I come in, dear?”.
She crossed the room, turned the key and let him
in. Drace entered, hesitatingly, his furtive eyes still
refusing to meet her gaze. Nor, as he shut the door
behind him, did he seem to know just what to say. It
was Maida who broke the awkward stillness.
“Well?" she asked, coldly. "Has he gone, yet?”
"Naylor?'' he queried, in momentary evasion.
“Naturally,” said Maida, anger tinged by a pity for
the broken and shuffling old man before her. “Who
else? You said he was to go in fifteen minutes. More
than an hour later, you and he were lunching together.
Has he gone, yet?”


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149
"Well, no, he hasn't,” admitted Drace, confusedly.
“He hasn't. And that is what I came up here to speak
to you about, little girl.”
But he did not speak. Instead, he fell silent, pucker-
ing his white brows and fumbling weakly at his watch-
chain. And again it was Maida who spoke first.
"Do you mean to tell me," she asked, incredulously,
"that you will let him stay on here,—under the same
roof with your daughter,-after the abominable thing
he did, this morning ?".
“He-he has apologized for that, dear," the old
man hastened to assure her. "He admits it was a rough
and hasty action. And he asks me to bring you his
apologies; since you wouldn't stay downstairs, this
noon, to receive them. He is sincerely sorry for fright-
ening you so. Sincerely sorry. I-I am certain it will
not happen again.”
Maida could not believe the evidence of her own
ears.
“Father!” she exclaimed.
"I know, my dear," muttered Drace, "I know! It
was very rude,—very distressing! I–I lost my own
temper, at the time. But when a man is honestly
regretful for a fault--and if that fault is due to a
sincere emotion, such as true love,—why, one can
scarcely refuse to accept his contrite apologies, you
know.”
He spoke haltingly,—his eyes anywhere except on
hers,—forcing out his words as though repeating a
carefully learned speech.
Maida stared, aghast. She could not believe this was


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the same man whose honest anger in her behalf had
played like forked lightning about the secretary's head.
“Father!" she breathed, again; feeling herself to be
in some fantastically hideous nightmare.
Spurred by her tone, Jared Drace prattled on:
"You see, daughter, a man in love is a man tempo-
rarily insane. And as a matter of fact, no man need
be ashamed of an honest love. No man's honest love
degrades the woman it's lavished on. Poor Naylor
lost control of himself, for a second. He won't do it
again. I am certain of that. I have his word for it.
And it would be cruel in me to discharge him, and per-
haps wreck his career, for one such slip. Especially.
since he is so sorry for his discourteous behavior. So,"
he finished lamely, "I am giving him another chance."
"Another chance?” she echoed. “Another chance
to make brutal love to me?"
"No!” he declared.
"But what is to prevent him?" she insisted, hot with
anger. “If you can overlook such an affront to me,
this time, why, next time, you will probably be asking
me to consent to marry him.”
"No!” he cried; with a flush on his grayish face.
"A thousand times no! I'd far rather see you dead
than married to such a man!"
And now there could be no doubting Drace's fierce
sincerity. It shone from his tired old eyes, transfigur-
ing them.
"No!” he repeated. “I pledge you that shall never
happen. Rest easy about it.”
“Then,” she urged, "when you know he has boasted


BLACK GOLD
151
to us that he ‘always gets what he wants' and that he
wants to marry me,—when he has insulted me, vilely,
to-day,—when you ordered him to leave,—why, oh
why do you let him stay on?”
"I've just explained that to you,” said Drace, his
momentary indignation merging into peevishness;
while the look of furtive fear crept back into his face.
“Besides, the fellow is tremendously useful to me,
just now ;-he is all-important to me in an all-impor-
tant deal I am putting through. When that is safely out
of the way,” lowering his voice and speaking with a
senile cunning that sent a qualm of disgust through
Maida, "when that is safely out of the way, I'll send
him about his business in double quick time. I prom-
ise you that.”
"In the meantime, he is to live in the same house
with me?" asked Maida. “He is to have every chance
to do again what he did to-day? I am to see him and
treat him as if nothing had happened? Oh, Father,
that is so impossible, so unworthy of you! Won't you
do as you planned; and let me act as your secretary
until you can get some one, more competent than I, to
fill Wolfe Naylor's place? Won't you? Say you will!
Say you'll discharge him and let me do his work!"
"I–I can't!” he muttered, wretchedly. "I-I wish
to God I could, dear! But,-just now-I can't get on
without him. I can't. I can't explain. You'll have
to take my word for it. In the financial world, there
are many associates that are uncongenial. But we put
up with them with the best grace we can. So long as


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we need them. And Naylor is absolutely necessary to
me, just now.”
Into Maida's vision, as the querulous old voice
trailed off, came the picture of the scene she had wit-
nessed in the study.
"Father,” she asked, abruptly, “what hold has Wolfe
Naylor on you? Why are you so afraid of him? If
there's something discreditable in your life that he has
found out, don't let him blackmail you this way! Let
him tell. Let him do his worst. You and I will
weather it, side by side, somehow or other; no matter
how disgraceful it is.”
Again she saw the glint of complete sincerity in her
father's eyes as they met hers,-firmly and steadfastly,
for once. And Jared Drace replied:
"There is nothing shady or disgraceful in my life,
daughter. He is not a melodrama villain who has dug
up some crime of mine that can't bear the light. He
has a hold on me. Yes. But not that kind of a hold.
I can say no more about it. And I don't even know
how you chanced to guess that much. But, through
that hold and because he is so needful to me, I can't
discharge him, just now. I must not only keep him
on here, but I must try to make life pleasant to him ;
for my own sake and for yours. That is why I ask
you to behave toward him as though nothing had
happened;—to let us all three pick up our domestic
life here as it was this morning, before he ”.
"Before he treated me as you would have killed him
for treating me, if your mysterious business interests
here did not take precedence of your only daughter!"


154
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will see to it that he shall never marry me, I am to be
polite and cordial to him, so that he may fancy I'll
some day consent to marry him? And that will keep
him in a good humor?”.
“You have no right to twist my words so!” fumed
Drace, with the impotent bluster of a man hopelessly in
the wrong. “You know very well, I never implied any-
thing of the sort. I-14 "
“Then what else was implied ?" she challenged.
"After what happened this morning, if I am cordial
and pleasant to him, won't Wolfe Naylor have every
right to believe I no longer resent what he did; and
wouldn't an affection for him be the only thing that
could make any girl fail to resent it? What better en-
couragement could he ask? It stands this way: I am
to help you along by pretending to encourage him ;-
until you no longer have need of his services and until
you can break the hold he has gained over you. That
is what you ask me, in effect, to do."
She paused, as if for an answer. But the man stood
with mutely hanging head and shuffling feet.
"I have never yet disobeyed you, sir," she continued,
presently, as Drace did not speak. “I had hoped I
should never have to. But when a father forgets his
duty toward his daughter, I think the daughter is justi-
fied in forgetting her duty toward him. Justified or
not, it is what I am going to do. I shall not speak to
Wolfe Naylor again. I shall not show by word or look
that I know he is here. I shall take my meals in my
own rooms, until he is gone. I shall not stay in any


156
BLACK GOLD
ranchhouse dooryard until dusk that evening. As he
reached the yard he saw a Chinaboy going in at the
gate; and in the twilight he recognized the visitor as
one of the two servants who had so impassively watched
his tussle with Señora when he had ridden to Maida's
home.
The Chinaboy, catching sight of Barry, left the gate
and came toward him. Taking from his blouse an en-
velope, he tendered it to Barry; walking off without a
word, as soon as this mission of his was achieved.
Gale carried the note up the steps and to a spot on
the porch where a shaft of radiance from the just-
lighted hall lamp could fall on it. His fingers trembled
a bit as he pressed the envelope; and he wondered why
Maida should have written to him so soon after seeing
him.
He was of no mind to let Dick O’Rell's noisy chat-
ter interrupt the reading of his sweetheart's words.
So, instead of going indoors with it, he stopped in the
patch of lamplight on the porch, to read it undisturbed.
But even before he opened the envelope, he saw that
the handwriting was not Maida's. Indeed, it was not
handwriting at all; for the superscription and the letter
inside were neatly typed on stiff and heavy correspond-
ence paper. Gale read:
“Barry Gale, Esq.
“My dear Sir:
“At Mr. Jared Drace's direction I am writing to con-
vey to you his regretful decision that he cannot ask
you to repeat your visits of to-day and yesterday to his
home. Mr. Drace, while in California, desires com-


158
BLACK GOLD
he could explain to her his inability to come to the
house whose doors were now closed to him. If she
did not know of Naylor's note, she might well think
her cavalier was inexcusably rude in breaking the ap-
pointment.
However, all that complication could be taken up at
the proper time. At present, in spite of the annoyance
of the note, the long day of outdoor work had made
Barry hungry. Supper ought to be ready for him, by
this time. And he, most assuredly, was more than
ready for supper.
Stuffing the letter into his pocket, Gale entered the
house. Roy had been left at home that morning on ac-
count of the ride with Maida which was to have begun
his master's day. At Barry's first foot fall in the yard,
the collie had sprung eagerly to the front door and had
begun an assault on its panels; whining eagerly in his
effort to reach the beloved overlord who that day had
refused to take his canine chum along on his journey-
ings.
As Gale threw open the door, Roy leaped upon him,
patting him ecstatically on the chest with his fast-flying
little white paws, striving to lick his face, and quivering
with ecstatic delight at this reunion after a whole day
of absence.
Thus do collies greet the homecoming of the man
whom they have accepted as their god. Thus do they
render joyous homage to their deity. Thus do they
shame the more selfish devotion of their fellow-mor-
tals ;-asking only to serve and to love and to guard;
with no reward save a careless pat on the head or a


160
BLACK GOLD
to be worthless. It was Gale who served as the balance
wheel of the ranch's affairs and whose frequent wet-
blanketing of Dick's visionary projects succeeded in
keeping their property on a paying basis and out of the
bankruptcy courts.
Just now, he was infinitely more interested in eating
a hearty supper and getting a good night's sleep, than
in hearing O’Rell evolve some wondrous plan for
sweetening the silt soil in the "south hundred acres” or
for hiring a professional rainmaker to eke out the
ranch's bare twenty-four average yearly inches of rain.
Barry was about to say something of the sort and
to sniff the air hungrily in search of some luring scent
of ham-and-eggs and boiling coffee. But the thrilledly
blissful look on O’Rell's face checked him. Gale felt
as though he had been about to push aside some child
who was bent on showing him its new doll. He had
not the heart to snub Dick's radiant enthusiasm; with-
out at least hearing what he had to say.
Sitting down in his favorite big chairma disreput-
ably swollen and misshapen seat, upholstered in shabby
torn brown leather,-he drew out his pipe and filled it.
"Fire away!” he said, resignedly.
Dick had not waited for the permission. Already,
in gobblingly excited phrases he was beginning to tell
his tale.
"I'll start at the beginning,” said O’Rell, “and I'll get
to the point as quickly as I can."
Barry groaned in spirit. Seemingly, from the pre-
amble, this was to be one of O’Rell's more or less
lengthy stories; leading up to what Dick evidently


BLACK GOLD
161
deemed a dramatic climax. He lighted his pipe, and
said once more:
"Fire away!"
"I went up to Gopher Hill, at daybreak,” began his
cousin, “as we'd arranged I should. I decided to spend
the first two-hour shift in quartering the ground; and
in marking it out in sections; each one about big
enough to thrash out carefully in one morning's two-
hour shift. That's the systematic way to
"To give the Argentine ant a fine chance to work
out his unholy alliance with the mealybug, in wrecking
our oranges," supplemented Gale, crossly, "and to let
the red rice get a nice tidy start in the paddies, and the
barley to get a few choice blights and the rest of the
ranch go to blazes. In those two hours a day, hun-
dreds of really needful things could be done. We're
short-handed as it is. You know that. And with un-
skilled farm labor at $4.50 a day— "
He was ashamed of himself for this rude damper
on his chum's eagerness. But he was hungry; and this
cock-and-bull search for non-existing treasure annoyed
him.
“Quite so," assented Dick, cheerily, and in no way
cast down by his cousin's growled disapproval. "Quite
so. All those things could be done. But would they
be worth a trifle more than fifty thousand dollars to us
or to any one? Would they? Chorus by the company:
‘They would not!'”.
“And this fool gold hunt- "
“This fool gold-hunt,” Dick caught him up, "is pay-
ing gilt-edge dividends, the very first day out. Just


162
BLACK GOLD
bear that in mind, a few minutes, won't you, and let it
keep you from all these merry little interruptions?
I've got a yarn to spin, I tell you ;-a yarn worth hear-
ing."
“Go ahead!" vouchsafed Gale, wearily, yet perplexed
in spite of himself at the hint as to dividends.
"I quartered the hill and made my cairn marks,”
proceeded O’Rell. "It didn't take me anything like
two hours. So I came back and got Fraser and Kline
to help me on those new levees. We were through, a
little before sunset. And I thought I'd fill out my
day's two hours of treasure-hunt. So I went back to
the hill.
"By the way," he broke off, whimsically, as Barry's
fingers began to play an impatient tattoo on the chair
arm, “as I was coming down from Gopher Hill this
morning, I saw, a half-mile or so away from me, a
man and a woman on horseback, riding along the upper
road. They didn't seem in a hurry, at all. So I inferred
the man couldn't be a rancher. Or else he'd have remem-
bered about Argentine ants and mealybugs and red rice
and unskilled labor at $4.50 a day and a lot of other
things; and he'd have said to that very pretty girl: 'My
dear young lady, I can't ride any farther with you,
to-day, because there's a swad of work that needs to be
done. And in my absence there is nobody but my
clever and efficient and handsome cousin, Richard
O’Rell, Esquire, to superintend it.' That's what the
horseman would unquestionably have said; if he'd been
a rancher. It pained me to see a man wasting so much
of a fine working morning as he was wasting. Want


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BLACK GOLD
But I didn't get there. The section I was aiming for
was at the very crest of the hill. Well, about two-
thirds of the way up to it, on this side, where that steep
bit of rocky grade begins, under the summit, I made a
short cut, through a manzanita thicket. The bushes
stood high and thick; but it looked like an easier way
than shinning up all that slope of loose rock. I'd gotten
through the thicket, almost to the far edge of it,
scrambling uphill all the way and sometimes having to
grab hold of one of the smelly red bush-stems to steady
me. Then what do you suppose happened?”
He paused in true rhetorical style, for reply.
“You woke up and found it was all an evil dream?”
hazarded Gale, monstrously solemn. “And that you
were no longer the Gypsy's Bride?”
· O’Rell glared coldly at him; then ignored the flip-
pancy, and proceeded :
"I stubbed my toe over a bit of rock. It hurt like the
very deuce. For it hit me on my very worst corn. I
got mad, and reached down and groped for the measly
rock, to throw it into the next county. I picked it up.
And it wasn't a rock, at all. It was—this!"
Opening the table drawer, he lifted out a jet black
bar of metal; perhaps four inches wide, by four inches
thick and some twelve inches in length. From the way
he handled the thing, it seemed heavy.
Holding it up for Gale's inspection, Dick then laid
it carefully on the table between them.
"That's what I found," he proclaimed. “Now, may-
be you'll agree with me when I say the very first day's
treasure hunt has brought in big dividends !”


BLACK GOLD
165
Barry eyed the dull black oblong without comprehen-
sion. His mind, jaded by weariness, could not grasp
the import of Dick's revived excitement at handling
the object.
“Looks like a badly-baked brick,” commented Barry.
“What's the main idea ?”
As he spoke, he smothered a yawn, and glanced apol-
ogetically at his cousin, as if deprecating his own lack
of interest in the other's eagerness.
"The main idea," answered O’Rell, bending over the
sinister-looking black oblong, "is this: Watch it!"
He made a sudden motion of his right hand. Barry
blinked uncomprehendingly, for half a second. Then,
the weariness and boredom were wiped from his face
as by a sponge.
With a wordless cry of stark astonishment, he
bounded to his feet and stooped breathlessly over the
black brick.


BLACK GOLD
167
I dug it with my thumbnail, and it was soft enough
tom "
"Gold !” repeated Barry, dazed. “Good Lord!”
Into his numbed senses crept the mystic lure and
magic of the precious metal he was fingering ;-the
same wizard charm which, since the birth of time, has
maddened mankind and made men squander home and
business and life itself in an obsessed pursuit of the
wondrous stuff ;—the magnet that drew across the thou-
sands of miles of hostile and wilderness plains the
fathers of California.
Barry forgot for the time that he was a clear-headed
and steady-nerved ranchman. He forgot even that he
was hopelessly and despairingly in love with a girl he
could never hope to win. He forgot everything except
that he was at grips with one of the mightiest and most
terrible of all human emotions: the gold-lust.
He had held in his hands, more than once, checks
which doubtless represented a far larger sum of actual
money than did this ingot. And he had not then
known the irrational thrill which now encompassed
him. For now he was face to face with the actual
symbol of all wealth and of human grandeur.
He was holding between his palms a mass of raw
metal;—the metal that men spend decades and for-
tunes and souls and lives in seeking. The treasure-
mania had him by the throat. He was aghast at the
magic power whose breath was setting his well-bal-
anced brain awhirl.
"Yes," spoke up Dick O’Rell, reading his face and
his every dizzy thought. "I know just how you feel.


BLACK' GOLD
169
the rice paddies. Then, after they sprout, we can
have thousands of nice fat gold ingots. Enough to buy
us chuck steak and potatoes for breakfast every Sunday
and a pint of ice cream. on our birthdays. Won't that
be nice?”
"Hold on!” interrupted Barry, not at all impressed
by his cousin's annoyed irony. "I didn't mean that I
doubted you found it just where and how you said.
You ought to know better than that, Dick. What I
meant was, I don't believe this ingot can be part of
the Ruggles' loot."
“No, indeed,” agreed Dick, in a maddeningly sooth-
ing tone, as his temper frayed still further at Gale's
denseness. "No. You're right. It can't possibly be
part of their plunder. It can't. That stands to reason.
Their cache is probably on some other part of the hill.
This ingot is an outcrop of some goldmine. An up-to-
date mine where Mother Nature takes the trouble to
smelt out all her gold and mold and paint it and then
leave one of the ingots sticking up out of the earth to
guide folks to the mine and induce them to delve for
the rest. Like the peanut or lemon drop the candy
butchers used to toss in our laps on trains, to coax us
into buying a whole bagful. It's "
“Dick,” snapped Barry, "sometimes I wonder why
an otherwise omniscient Providence ever took the
trouble to give you a voice at all, and then forgot to
gear it up to your brain. Your head shows the worst
bit of 'assembling' on record. All the needful parts
except the tongue and the vocal parts were left out or
disconnected. Now if you'll stop trying to be sarcastic


170
BLACK GOLD
(and succeeding only in being asinine) I'll tell you what
I mean. That bullion the Ruggles' outfit stole was on
its way down from the mine when they nabbed it. It
went by stage, down toward the mining center at Red-
ding. Good. Well, from all I've read of the old min-
ing days out here, they never took the trouble to paint
the stuff when they shipped it, from one point to an-
other. And it's a certainty they didn't ship it in brick
form. They probably sent it down to Redding in the
handiest and easiest shape, after it had been mined. I
don't pretend to know much about such things. But
I'll wager they never molded it into bricks and painted
it, for a trip like that. It most likely went through the
local smelting furnace,-if it wasn't just unsmelted
dust,—and then was hustled down to Redding, as it
was."
Dick took up the bar again and stared at it with a
new thoughtfulness.
"That sounds like mighty good sense and logic, old
chap," he said, after a minute of brooding reflection.
"And it fits in with the things I've read and heard about
mining customs, up north, yonder. Just the same, it
can't be so. Why, just look at the facts! We read a
deathbede confession of Curly Enright's,—that the
Ruggles' plunder was buried on a hill, hereabouts. We
know Curly was forever exploring Gopher Hill. To-
day, hidden on Gopher Hill, I find this ingot. Is it
likely that there are two independent caches on that
one little hill? There has never been any story of other
gold cached near here. This must be the same lot.
Don't you see it must?"


BLACK GOLD
171
"No," said Gale, stubbornly, “I don't. This ingot is
molded and painted in shape to go to the sub-treasury
or to be shipped to Europe. They didn't ship gold in
that shape from little upcountry mines, in the early
Nineties. They- "
A knocking at the front door broke in on their ar-
gument. Both partners started, .nervously. O’Rell
slipped the ingot back into the table drawer and turned
the key, which he pocketed.
He and Gale went together out into the hallway.
Barry, tingling with the groundswells of excitement
and quite prepared for new complications, threw open
the front door.
On the threshold stood Caleb Romeyn, a rancher
from two miles down the road to Red Bluff. He was
a plodding, matter-of-fact oldster; and his uninspiring
presence did more than could anything else to bring
the two householders back to normal thought and ac-
tion.
"Hello!” said Romeyn, stepping in, unasked. “I
was on my way back from Redding,—took the wife up
there to see her folks. We was brought up, there-
abouts, her and I. And I stopped in on my way home
to ask you boys what luck you've had with that
Gov'ment 'Sperimental Station barley you was brag-
ging about last time I saw you. If it's turned out the
way you figgered it would, I was thinking of putting
down my ten-acre corner in it, when ".
"It turned out even better than we were 'bragging' it
would," answered Barry, as O’Rell seemed still too
full of his gold-obsession to make instant reply.


172
BLACK GOLD
“Only, you're wrong about our getting it from the
Experimental Station. Sale got his original seed from
there and made the hit of his life with the crop from
it. We got our seed from Sale. He won't sell it out-
side Tehama County, you know. And he's right. Our
own good little county, first of all. The people who
were guying him for going to the County Agent for
seed and for advice, are all falling over themselves,
now, to do the same thing. This part of the State is
wide awake, at last, to the fact that the County Agents
are as necessary to the rancher as a doctor to an invalid.
And their ranches are showing the results.-But, I for-
got to ask you: Have you eaten?"
He used the invitation formula that is universal in
Northern California; where a man would no sooner
think of letting a visitor,-rich or poor,-go hungry
from his door than he would think of stealing that
visitor's shoes. .
"Yes,” chimed in Dick, hospitality lifting him out
of his treasure-trance, “have you eaten?”
"Well, no,” said Romeyn, "I haven't. But- "
"But your wife's up Redding-way, and you're on
your way back to an empty house and a cold kitchen
range," interrupted Gale. “You're not going any far-
ther till you've eaten. Supper's about ready, anyhow.
Come in and I'll yell to Chang to put on an extra plate.
We can tell you all you want to know about the barley,
while we're feeding. Come along !"
He led the way into the living room; where he and
Dick found themselves casting guilty glances, from
time to time, at the locked table drawer as they chatted.


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BLACK GOLD
asked him that. 'Fine and el'gant. Here's how we
fix it: The rancher borrows money of the bank, to
get his start. Then if his crops pan out good, he pays
it back. If the crops all fail, he can't pay it. So the
bank loses out; and the loss comes back onto the de-
positors. And,' he says, 'that serves 'em right for put-
ting their money into banks instead of into land and
farm machinery,' he says. “So you see, the rancher
can't lose nothing, either way. Of course," added
Romeyn, in explanation, “of course I knew he was just
poking fun at me; and that there must be a hole in
his argument, somewheres. But even yet I get to
thinking over what he said; and for the life of me I
can't just see where "
"In the early Nineties,” broke in O’Rell, “when gold
was shipped from the mines in Trinity County and
Shasta County and thereabouts,—when it was shipped
down to Redding, for instance,—did they mold it first
into bricks,-say four by four by twelve inches,-and
paint it black,-and - ?”
“Who's been fooling you with yarns like that?” de-
manded Romeyn, in fine contempt. "Of course they
didn't! Not that I ever heard of, at least,” he qualified.
“And I knew about most of the big shipments from up
that fancy stuff to the gold, when it was just going to
be ?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," hastily intervened Barry,
trying to find his garrulous cousin's toe, beneath the
table, and stamp mercilessly on it, by way of signal.
“Now, about that barley crop of ours: Here's a point


BLACK GOLD
175
that may be of use to you in case you decide to plant
that ten-acre corner of yours in "
"Were you in or around Redding at the time of the
Ruggles' holdup?" recklessly interrupted O’Rell, lean-
ing across the table and addressing the guest.
Barry shook in his shoes; and yearned morbidly to
throw Dick out of the room on his head. But Romeyn
took the question as a matter of course.
"Sure I was," said he. "What's more,—though I'm
not boasting of it and it kept me awake some, for a few
nights afterwards,~I was in the crowd at Redding
when the Vigilanters strung up the three brothers to
the big pine tree, not more'n two or three hours after
they'd held up the stage over by Robbers' Rock, on the
Creek. Two of the Ruggleses were about my age.
But the third was just a kid. He'd barely turned sev-
enteen. The two older Ruggleses didn't ask any mercy
for themselves. But they begged, right pitiful, to have
their kid brother let off. One of 'em even promised to
tell where the gold was cached, if the Vigilanters would
spare the youngster. But they wouldn't hear to that,
the Vigilanters wouldn't. They was pretty riled and
plenty determined to put a quick stop to the outdoor
sport of robbing stages in that part of the State. So
up they strung the whole three of 'em. . . . Say,
where do you boys get your coffee? It's first rate.”
He looked wistfully into his newly-emptied cup and
then at Chang. The Chinaboy took the hint.
"Say,” exclaimed Romeyn, again, scarce pausing for
breath, “I wonder did either of you read that piece in
the Sennel about old Curly Enright saying the Rug-


176
BLACK GOLD
gles booty was cached on a hill in Tehama County? I
sure had to laugh when I read that piece," he rumin-
ated, his beady gray eyes atwinkle.
“But why?" challenged Dick, once more eluding
Gale's scowl. “What was there to laugh about?
It- "
"Because it was so everlasting funny,” explained
Romeyn. “I knew Curly Enright, pretty well, in those
days. He was a punkin-head and a blabber and a cut-
up, even then. Just like he was when you boys knew
him. (Not wanting to speak mean of a poor dead
cuss.) I knew the two oldest Ruggles fellers, too, and
I knew Tremaine. The Ruggleses were a pair of wise
crooks. I leave it to you, would they trust a blabbing
half-wit, like Curly Enright, to help 'em out in a rob-
bery where silence and good sense was their one hope
of not getting caught? Why, Curly would have spilt
the whole story, first time he got drunk or first time he
felt braggish. And they knew he would. They'd no
sooner have taken him into that deal than they'd have
printed a piece in the paper, beforehand, telling the
public they was planning to hold up the stage.
:“As for Tremaine, why, the Ruggleses hated that
feller like he was poison. There'd been some sort of
mixup about a girl he and one of the Ruggleses had
wanted to marry. They hated each other like toad pie.
Tremaine wouldn't have asked anything better than to
betray 'em to the Sheriff. Is it likely, I ask you, that
either Curly Enright or Tremaine would have been let
to stand in on that robbery? Nope, it was Curly's last
lie. Likewise his biggest. Besides, that myst'ry about


178
BLACK GOLD
stood for a moment facing each other in silence. Then
Barry said:
"Well, you heard his story. What do you think of
it?”
"I-I don't know," said O'Rell, hesitatingly. “It all
goes to show that the gold I found to-day is not the
same gold the Ruggles brothers stole. And it goes to
show that Enright lied. Yet Enright said the loot was
hidden in a Tehama County hill; and we know he was
always nosing about Gopher Hill. And on Gopher
Hill I found this ingot,” he continued, unlocking the
drawer and laying the black bar on the table. "In
other words, it can't possibly be. But it is. And that's
the answer.”
“Did you look for any more ingots, after you found
this one?” asked Barry, again turning the bar over
and studying its two scratches.
"It was getting dusk,” said Dick, "and in the
shadows of those manzanita bushes it was too dark to
see plainly, any more. I looked, of course. And I'm
going up there at dawn to-morrow to look again.
But- "
"I'm going with you!” interpolated Barry.
-"Good boy!" approved Dick. "You're a slow start-
er; but, once on the way, you're a willing little per-
former, all right. As I was telling you—I looked
through all the ground about there, so far as I could
see by such bum light. I went over it on my hands and
knees; and got my best khaki shirt torn. As well as I
was able to make out, this ingot here had been lying in
a deep little hollow, at the edge of the thicket; with a


BLACK GOLD
179
lot of rather loose dead leaves scattered over it. I felt
all through the hollow,-it was a sort of natural trough
of ground, about two feet wide and a foot deep and
some six feet long and all choked with leaves and
rubbish. I had stepped into it when my toe hit the
sharp corner of the ingot. There wasn't- "
"Here's the idea!" decided Barry. “That hollow
was where the piled earth had sunk in, during all these
years, above the hole where the ingots were buried.
One of the ingots was nearer the surface than the
others. And when the loose earth began to settle into
a hollow, it fell away from this ingot and left it on
the surface."
"Sure!" agreed Dick. “The cache lies below that
hollow, and this ingot was part of the Ruggles' haul.
Even though we've just proved there wasn't any cache
hereabouts and that the gold wasn't in painted ingot
form when it wasn't buried there. It's all as clear red
as Sacramento River mud."
"I didn't say it was the Ruggles' cache,” corrected
Gale. “I meant only it was a cache of some sort. It
must have been. For no one in his senses would have
left this bar of gold lying around loose on the ground
or in a hollow. To-morrow morning we'll go up there,
together, with a spade and a pick; and dig for the rest
of it. I'm glad it's on our own land and moderately
out of the way from any chance of people happening
in on us while we're at work."
"It seems to me," mused O’Rell, "that I remember
hearing a worthy man, no longer ago than last night,
saying something about the folly of wasting time and


BLACK GOLD
181
ness in front of him ;-and-framed against this sable
background,—the merest momentary flash of a blurred
moon-white face.
From the whitish splash of face glowed the eyes he
had seen on the night before. Luminous, huge, yet.
snakelike in their jet black malignant intensity, they
met Barry's horrified gaze for the merest pulsebeat of
time. Then, even before the swift vanishing of the
indistinct blur of white face, the eyes were invisible.
Gale was aware of the same uncanny feeling that had
seized him, on his former glimpse of those eyes;—of a
queer little pringling along his scalp and spine ;-of a
vexing sensation that he had come into momentary
touch with the supernatural, the occult.
For perhaps a second, he stood, staring out into the
dense blackness, trying to trace the vanishing interloper
and to steady his own wrenched nerves.
: Then upon his ear smote, soft yet distinct, the pad-
pad-pad of fast running feet; drawing farther away
from the window at every step. There was nothing
supernatural about this sound. It betokened nothing
except a very strong desire on the trespasser's part to
get himself out of the way of pursuit as fast as he
could.
Barry, with a start, came to himself; his brain alert,
his nerves steady, a gust of wholesome wrath replac-
ing his second of dismay.
“Roy!” he shouted, summoning the collie who had
roused himself from a nap at sound of the opening
shutters. “Roy! After him! Get him!"
As he yelled the command, Barry Gale leaped bodily


BLACK GOLD
183
ning feet had ceased. The night, too, was close-clouded.
The darkness seemed to press against his eyeballs, like
a black bandage. Somewhere, close to him, was the
man who twice had spied upon him;—the man whose
strange eyes had haunted him, off and on, all day.
Not ten seconds had elapsed since he had seen the
blurred face, at the shutter. Not five seconds had
elapsed since he had given tumultuous chase. The
fellow could not have gone far. In his own helpless-
ness as a tracker, Barry turned to the collie.
Roy had followed his master through the casement
and out into the dooryard. Having had no definite or-
ders as to what or whom he should pursue, he was now
dancing frenziedly around Gale.
Barry, summoning the dog to follow, ran back to
the window. He pointed to the ground beneath the
house wall. Though he himself could see nothing down
there in the darkness, he knew a dog's vision,-
though much more nearsighted by day than a human's,
-is more clear by night than any man's.
He knew there must be footmarks there; and that
Roy could not only see them, but,—what was far more
important, —could catch their scent Pointing down-
ward, he called to the collie:
"Track him, Roy! Get him!”
The collie sniffed interestedly at the earth, dancing
on his white little toes and whimpering with eagerness.
In an instant he had caught the intruder's scent and
was on the trail.
By the time Dick O’Rell had blown out the lamp and
had clambered down through the window, to the


BLACK GOLD
187
toward the loud-sneezing Gale. O’Rell looked on in
growing amazement.
“What in blue blazes ” he began.
Then, as the dog shook himself violently, Dick
sneezed and dug with his free hand at his own eyes.
"Not blue blazes, at all!” he sneezed. “It's red
blazes! Cayenne pepper. Bushels of it! I know, be-
cause I got it in my eyes, once, when I was a kid.
There's nothing else just like it. I— ".
He relapsed into another sneezing-fit, and let the
expiring match go out. Barry cleared his eyes of the
fiery particles, as best he could; and sopped at them
with his handkerchief.
Just then he chanced to glance tearily toward the
house. A faint light was coming into view from an
upper window; the window of the room occupied by
Chang. The Chinaboy, apparently, had been awak-
ened by the din at the far end of the dooryard, and was
lighting his candle.
"Chang !" shouted Gale. “Come out here, on the
run; and bring along a couple of flashlights from the
hall! Jump!"
While O’Rell was seeking to silence his own sneezes
and to strike another match,—while Barry was reach-
‘ing for the anguished dog that rubbed moaningly
against his knees for help,—they heard Chang clatter
down the short stairs. The next second the Chinaboy,
scantily clad and carrying a white blazing flashlight in
each yellow hand, came trotting out of the house
toward them. Barry took the lights from him, com-
manding:


BLACK GOLD
189
As he talked, Gale had set his light on the ground;
and was working with his handkerchief and fingers
over the tormented dog. Roy,—silent now, after the
first unbearable agony of his experience with the red
pepper,-submitted tremblingly and gratefully to his
master's skilled ministrations.
"Poor old puppy !" consoled Barry. "You'll be able
to see again, before long. The worst of it happened
when you rolled over. That got it in your hair and
eyes ;—and into ours, too. You kicked up an awful
dust. Warm water and witch-hazel will fix you, all
right.”
He stooped and picked up the collie in his arms, to
carry him to the kitchen. And then he noted for the
first time that O’Rell, flashlight in hand, was going
over the ground, to either side of the pepper-line.
“Here's a funny thing !" commented Dick, in noisy
perplexity, as he came back from his examination.
“Look along here,—the direction we came from ;—the
direction the man came from, that Roy was after. See
those big brogan marks in the soft ground? That's
where he ran. Those are the same marks we saw
under the window, last night, you'll remember.”
"Yes," assented Barry, as he started toward the
house, bearing the suffering dog tenderly in his arms.
"I know. Same man both times. I knew that, any-
way. I saw his eyes again, to-night. I saw the shutter
shake, just a tiny bit, as you and I were jawing, in
there. I jumped to the window and — "
“Yes, yes!” interposed O’Rell, impatiently. "But
get this idea, before you go in. See those brogan-


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BLACK GOLD
prints? They run straight up to this line of pepper.
There they stop. They STOP! The ground is just
as soft there as anywhere else. But the footprints
stop! Look for yourself.”
Gale followed the play of the strong flashlight along
the ground. Out of the gloom, from toward the house,
showed the distinct marks of running feet, in the dirt;
—the imprint of heavy brogans, striking deepest in
earth where the runner's toes had dug for purchase in
the silty soil.
Up to the line of red pepper extended the footmarks,
and a single short stride beyond it. There they van-
ished. There was no tree nearby, which the fugitive
could have climbed. There were no marks as of a
waiting vehicle or horse which he might have mounted.
In the center of a stretch of soft open ground the foot-
prints had disappeared.
Puzzled, the two men cast about the spot for twenty
yards in every direction. But nowhere did the brogan-
marks show, again. Marveling, they went at last to
the house, entering through the kitchen door.
There, Chang had ready for them the warm water
and cloths and witch-hazel. For ten minutes, Gale
wrought over the injured collie. When Roy could once
more see and when the anguish in his nostrils had
abated somewhat, they made him a bed of rags, beside
the range, and left him for the night.
Then, still talking perplexedly of the last hour's hap-
penings, Gale and O’Rell fared back to the living room.
Dick tried the door. Then he rattled the knob more


BLACK GOLD
191
determinedly. After which, turning to Barry with a
bothered frown, he exclaimed:
"The door's locked! Locked from the inside!
What the deuce do you make of that? I shut it be-
hind us when we went in there, before. But I'll swear
I didn't lock it. It's—it's been locked since we dived
out through the window.”
"It couldn't have been !” denied Barry, taking a turn
at the resisting knob. “There was nobody in the
house, but ourselves and Chang. And Chang was
nowhere near this part of the ground floor. No-
body- "
“We left the ingot lying out on the table !" cried
O’Rell in sudden dismayed recollection. “And now
the door's locked against us!"


CHAPTER EIGHT
D ARRY GALE'S answer to his cousin's stam-
D mered words took the form of instant and violent
action. Throwing all his weight into the blow,-and
barking his knuckles liberally in the impact,—he drove
his right fist against the upper panel of the door, next
to the knob.
The stout wood split from bottom to top; but the
panel itself held. Even as Gale struck, Dick O’Rell
dashed down the hall and out of the front door.
“I can get around to the window, quicker than you
can hammer that door in!” he called as he ran. "And
if any one's still in there "
His voice was lost in the clatter of his own feet.as
he took the veranda steps at a bound, and scurried
around the side of the house, toward the living room
window.
Gale, meanwhile, regardless of barked knuckles and
of jarred arm-muscles, smote again with full force
upon the door. The split panel caved in, under the
whalebone-and-iron impetus of this second blow. In
two pieces it clattered to the floor, inside.
Barry thrust his arm into the unlighted room, feel-
ing for the key. His fingertips closed about it. Who-
ever had locked the door had not troubled to remove
the key. With a single twist, Barry turned it and
swung open the maltreated door.
192


BLACK GOLD
193
As he did so, he sent a flare from his flashlight
through the dark space in front of him. The room
was empty; though a man's head and shoulders showed
at the open window. At this apparition, Barry made
a bull rush.
But he checked his charge, halfway, with a grin of
self-contempt at the trick his overwrought nerves had
played on him. For, as his flashlight now revealed, the
man climbing in through the window was Dick O’Rell.
Turning aside, Barry struck a match and lighted
the lamp, whose chimney was still uncomfortably
warm. His eyes and O’Rell's were sweeping the room.
To all outward appearance, it was undisturbed by the
mysterious visitor who had entered it and had locked
the door from within and had then departed,--all in the
brief space of their own absence from the house.
"Came in by the window," mused the wondering
O’Rell, “crossed the room, locked the door and then
crawled out of the window again, without mussing up
anything here! Funny sort of Smart Alec stunt for a
midnight prowler to play! He must be the original
Village Cut-up. Or— ".
His bewildered speech ended in a grunt of dismay.
His questing gaze had lighted on the table. And, at
the same moment, Barry's own glance was riveted
there.
“The ingot!" babbled Dick, aghast. "It's gone!
Gone!"
“Yes," acquiesced Gale, with a forced calmness.
"It's gone. So I see. The 'Smart Alec' wasn't such a
brainless Village Cut-up, after all. He took a big


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BLACK GOLD
chance. But the stake was worth it. That bar of gold
weighed several pounds. Figure out the value of gold
per pound Troy; and you can estimate his haul.”
| “But,” blithered Dick, dumbfounded, “but, but it
can't be. It can't! I put out the light, in here, when
I followed you through the window after that hobo or
whatever he was. The gold bar was on the table, right
here under the lamp. I saw it, as I blew the lamp out.
No one coming past in our absence could have peeked
in and seen it. For the room was pitch black.
Yet- "
"Yet some one did come in and get it; and make
safe from intrusion by locking the only door leading
in here from the hall,” supplemented Gale. "We know
that. It couldn't well have been the chap with the
queer big eyes. For he wouldn't be likely to stop in his
run, after sprinkling the pepper; and risk being caught
by coming back to the house. Sneak thieves and second
story men don't go back to continue their work, after
a household has been all roused and when every one's
on the watch for them.”
"Then there were two of the yeggs," declared Dick.
“That's the answer. There were two of them. They
had been looking in, through a crack in the shutter.
You scared them off by opening the shutter. One of
them bolted; and you and Roy made after him. The
other waited till the coast was clear; and then climbed
in here and swiped the ingot. That's the solution !"
And Dick O’Rell looked as proud as might Sherlock
Holmes at the point of the story where the great de-
tective usually says: "My dear Watson, the police as


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BLACK GOLD
"Even so," growled Dick, "that doesn't make as
much sense as my theory. Why would any panhandler
or crook take such a big chance of capture, just for
the sake of being alone in our living room for two
minutes? Why?”
For answer, Barry pointed to the bare spot on the
table, where the ingot had lain.
"Sure!” scoffed Dick. “Only, if he came here, after
the lamp was out, how could he have known the gold
was in this room? How could he have known there
was anything in here worth stealing? How could he?
The room was dark. So he couldn't possibly have
looked in and seen it. And the contents of two bache-
lor ranchers' living room aren't apt to be valuable
enough to warrant a crook in risking arrest by making
a touch-and-go two-minute visit to it, when every one
in the house is awake and on edge. Besides," with new
excitement, as he crossed over to the casement and bent
his head to a level with the sill, "from the window, at
this height, he couldn't have seen the ingot lying on
the table, even if he'd turned a flashlight into the room.
That file-stand of government reports is square be-
tween the window and the table. Any one who had
been peeking in, beforehand, could have seen me pick
up the ingot,—as I did, you remember, and look at
it again and then lay it down. He could have seen
that over the top of the file. And he could have seen
me lay it down and guessed where I laid it. Or he
could even have heard us talking about it, and he could
have come in then and looked for it. But it's a cinch
nobody, coming here while we were out, could have


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199
Then, as noiselessly as he had entered, Gale stole out
of the leanto and back toward the house.
“Pulse under seventy,” he muttered to himself, “and
as steady as a pendulum. That's not the heart action
of a man who has just taken a long chance and nabbed
more than a thousand dollars' worth of gold. Toni,
for one, comes through, clean.”
Any one who has had long dealings with Chinese
servants will understand why it did not occur to either
partner to suspect Chang of the theft. Apart from
which, both would have realized the Chinaboy had had
neither time nor opportunity to commit the robbery.
As for the little handful of day laborers who slept
in the barracks,—they were quartered nearly half a
mile from the house and had had a heavy day's work.
Moreover, all of them knew there was not, as a rule,
anything in the shabbily furnished ranch house worth
the risk of stealing. Nor, as Gale now pondered,
would Roy have followed so ferociously a trail as fa-
miliar to him as that of any one employed around the
ranch.
At dawn,-after a sleepless night of brain-wearying
conjecture,—Barry plunged into an ice-cold tub;
rubbed himself down till he tingled from head to foot;
clambered into his clothes and hurried out into the
dining room to join O’Rell in a nervously-gobbled
breakfast.
Neither partner was hungry. In the veins of both
coursed a swirling excitement ;—the fever of the gold-
quest. As quickly as they could, they finished the bare
meal and left the house. Gale carried a pick, elabor-


200
BLACK GOLD
ately hidden under the slicker he had donned for this
same purpose of concealment. O’Rell's slicker hid a
spade.
Thus, raincoat-clad, in face of what promised to be
a dazzlingly rainless day, they set forth with furtive
haste upon the mile trudge to Gopher Hill.
The sun had not risen. But, back of Tuscan Peaks
and of Mount Lassen beyond, the sky was deepening
from delicate rose-color into flame. Everywhere, the
birds were singing. Dew shone from leaf and blade.
The spice of life and vigor vibrated in the sharply brac-
ing early morning air. Nature was waking; in all the
matchless glory of a Northern California sunrise.
Barry Gale drew in great deep breaths of the in-
vigorating air. It cleansed from his worried brain the
mists of perplexity and of gold lust. He reveled in the
wonder and beauty of it all; as his eyes roved proudly
over the double wall of mighty mountains which
stretched out like sleeping kings; brooding over the
glorious valley between and beneath them;—the valley
Gale had learned to love.
Barry's gaze shifted to northward. There, such a
little distance from him, in that huddle of hills and
ravines beyond Iron Canyon, was hidden a squat gray
stone house. And in that house was sleeping the One
Girl!
Of old he had been wont to watch the sun rise be-
hind Lassen's snowcrest; and to remember, in shamed
sentimentalism, that, a few short hours earlier it had
risen over Maida's own Eastern home. And now the
same sun was shining on them both. The same lovely


BLACK GOLD
201
valley was housing him and the woman for whom his
heart had been yearning so long and so bitterly.
The realization brought back to him the memory
of the note he had received from Wolfe Naylor, the
preceding evening ;-a memory which the night's later
events had for a time wiped out. He was to have gone
riding with her this morning,—and what a God-given
morning for a ride !—but now, as soon as he should
return home from this wild-goose chase for treasure,
he must telephone her, explaining why he could not
keep the appointment. He frowned; and the glory of
the sunrise seemed momentarily clouded.
"Look at Lassen!” said O’Rell, breaking the long
silence between them. “See how the vapor curls and
eddies over it? That's the way the Old Lady looked,
just before the last eruption. Remember? And, last
night, when I was turning in, I happened to look out
of the window, in that direction. And there was a yel-
lowish pink tinge of light on the bottom part of that
bunch of cloud over the crater. Shouldn't wonder if
the eruption would be a reg'lar old he-one, when it
comes.”
"They're always going to be reg'lar old he-ones,
when they come,” said Barry, idly, “but somehow they
never are."
"No?” queried Dick, as he stopped and picked up
from the rubble at their feet a squarish particle of coal-
like black rock. “Then how about this? And how
about those acres of whopping big flat-sided black
bowlders, up Iron Canyon way? Where'd they come
from? How do those springs, down by the first site


202
BLACK GOLD
they chose for the Iron Canyon Dam, happen to be al-
most lukewarm, even in winter, and to smell of sul-
phur? Hey?"
“Oh, it's volcanic country, all right," agreed Barry.
“And there have been eruptions of Lassen that tore
the earth to shreds for miles around; and covered the
land in every direction with volcanic rock; and split
mile-deep fissures in the ground, and broke hills in half,
and all that. But it was hundreds of years ago. It
could never happen again.”
"When my dad was down at Washington, back in
the early Seventies,” said Dick, "with a petition for
universal military training, the Senate Committee
turned down the petition; on the ground that we'd
learned in the Civil War the uselessness of warfare and
that 'it could never happen again. Anything can 'hap-
pen again,' in this miracle State; where every plain
over a mile wide is a valley, and every plain under a
mile wide is a canyon. There's the manzanita clump,
up there, on the shoulder of the hill!” he broke off.
“The clump where I found the ingot.”
They had passed out of the level valley and had been
for some minutes breasting the high ground above their
pasture lands. Now, they were mounting the lowest
slopes of Gopher Hill, itself.
And, at sight of their goal, they ceased from talk
and from all thought save that of the treasure-hunt.
Shoulders down, feet gripping the steep and rubbly
surface, they thrust their way up the brush-cluttered
hill.
In Barry's heart,-as they neared the clump of


BLACK GOLD
203
straggly manzanitas with their rank-scented red stems
and dark foliage,-hammered away an irrepressible
excitement. Once more, he was under the black magic
of the gold-lure; gripped by it to the exclusion of all
else.
Now, shoulder to shoulder, they were plowing their
way through the manzanita clump. At the far edge,
O’Rell halted, glanced around him as if taking his
bearings; and then moved a rod or so to eastward along
the thicket's margin.
Here he came to a stop once more, while Barry
watched him with the fidgety eagerness of a dog that
waits for its master to throw a stick for retrieving.
Scratching his head, O’Rell peered about him; making
one or two little exploratory forays along the copse
edge.
Then, dropping to his knees in the outer fringe of
the thicket, he crept along thus for another two yards;
and exclaimed aloud in triumph.
"Here we are !” he exulted. "Yesterday I came upon
it from the other end; so I got tangled up, for a
minute, just now. Look!"
Barry was on his knees beside him; as tensely stirred
and athrill as Dick, himself. O’Rell had parted the
red stalks of two bushes and brought to view a narrow
trough on the surface of the stony hill; a trough
choked wellnigh to ground-level with dead leaves and
twigs and other rubbish.
"You're a methodical chap!" commented Gale;
speaking lightly, to minimize his own keen suspense.
"When you told me you had found that ingot in there


204
BLACK GOLD
and burrowed around for more, I didn't imagine you
had taken the bother to put back all the débris again,
just as you found it. And with a cobweb spun across
it, too.”
Dick O’Rell paused, as he was about to clear away
the stuff which choked the trough. He stared down
in dull astonishment at the spot.
"I—I didn't put the litter back again," he said,
confusedly. “I left it scattered all over the shop. I
cleaned out the trough, to the bottom, on the idea
there might be more ingots hidden there. I remem-
bered the place where the trough was, by its position,
and mostly by the little double bowlder at one side of it.
It looked like a pocket edition of Tuscan Peaks. It
was a glimpse of the same bowlder, just now, that made
me know I'd found the place again. I-
"If you mean that little gray rock behind you," cut
in Gale, "it hasn't a double peak at all. It's just a
dumpy little dornick.”
Dick whirled about and stared at the stone.
“Why," he stuttered. “Why, so it it !-I only got a
glimpse at it, as we came in here. I supposed it was
the same one. I- "
“There are hundreds of stones all around here, deep
bedded and cropping out, everywhere,” said Barry.
“You've picked the wrong one. There are dozens of
places where old-time eruptions and earthquakes made
little troughs in the ground, too. It's only natural
there should be rocks near more than one of them.
You'll have to start your search, all over, for the par-
ticular trough you found yesterday.”


BLACK GOLD
205
He was irritated;-and vexed at his own irritation.
A blunder or delay at the acme of such excitement as
his was bound to demand toll of the temper.
"Let's look farther," he suggested, trying to re-
member that Dick was as disappointed as he; and to
speak pleasantly. "We'll go around to the place where
you came through the thicket, yesterday, and begin
our search from there."
“This trough is just like the one yesterday," O’Rell
was muttering, undecidedly. “And what I took for a
two-peaked rock may have been this stone and the
smaller one just behind it. Though I don't quite see
how it could have been," he added, "for I made a
pretty close examination of all the landmarks I could
find. Still "
Experimentally, he thrust his fingers down into the
shallow hole. With a gasp, he jerked them out again
as if they had encountered a snake.
And, in his clenched hand was a black-coated bar of
gold!
Barry Gale fairly choked with amazement, as Dick
flourished the ingot in front of his blankly bewildered
face.
"Same place!" chortled O’Rell, hysterical in his
jubilation. “Same place! Same ingot! Can't be! But
it IS!"
He scrambled to his feet, and did a sprawling war
dance, brandishing the bar aloft. Barry, with bulging
eyes, looked on.
"Stuck my hand down there, just for no reason at
all!” sang O’Rell. “And, first thing it touched was


BLACK GOLD
207
furrow in this one. All the sides are smooth. Look.”'
With dropping jaw, Dick O’Rell turned the ingot
over and over, squinting closely at all its unscratched
planes. Then he looked up, in crass bewilderment, at
the equally bewildered Gale.
"What in blue blazes do you make of it all ?” he
whispered, a touch of awe in his jolly voice.
"I–I don't make anything of it!" returned Barry,
dully. “I don't make anything of any of the crazy
things that have been happening lately. It's all upside
down and impossible!”
With a vigorous shake of his wide shoulders, he
pulled himself together.
"Since we're in a dream,” said he, "let's turn it from
a silly nightmare into a golden dream. The ingot is
here. Or one just like it. We came up on the hill
to look for gold. Here's where we decided the cache
must be; because one of the ingots was washed to the
surface; and
"And now one more," amended Dick.
“And,” pursued Barry, "here's where we are going
to begin digging !"
He took off his slicker and rolled up his sleeves.
Then, lifting the pick he had dropped, he advanced
toward the trough. O’Rell, following his example, laid
down the ingot with much tender care; slipped out of
his slicker and gripped his spade.
"Here's where we get more wealth,” he prophesied,
"than the old ranch would yield us in ten years."
"And,” pessimistically added Barry, "more trouble,
perhaps, than the ranch would yield us in a century.


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BLACK GOLD
What was that?” he broke off, pick in air; as a sound
caught his alert ear.
Involuntarily crouching, both men peered forth
through the thin fringe of manzanita. In the direction
whence they had come, there was no sign of life;
except where, in the distance and far below them, Toni
was driving forth his restless gray-white billows of
sheep from the fold, toward the grazing ground. The
shepherd loomed up gigantic and with a forty foot
black shadow trailing behind him as he strode forward
into the sunrise. Zit, a whizzing dark smudge, in the
distance, was galloping and dodging, in a dozen places
at once,-keeping the regiment of sheep intact and
moving in the desired line.
To eastward, the sun was butting his fiery way
through a dun mist of volcanic smoke, above the crest
of Lassen. The long golden North California day had
begun.
To the northeast, and just below the hill-shoulder
where crouched the two treasure hunters, dipped the
precipitate gorge with its blackened walls and its cliff-
clusters of poison oak; and with the turbid yellow
Sacramento River crawling through its center;—the
deep and wide and magnificently sinister gorge known
to the Tehama County folk as "Iron Canyon."
Here, for years, it had been planned to dam the gorge
and to use the mighty volume of back-up river water
to irrigate five of the Sacramento Valley's richest
counties. Now that the government had at last de-
cided to interest itself more vitally in the huge irriga-
tion scheme, one party of surveyors after another had


210
BLACK GOLD
"Can't we shoo them away, or something?” he mut-
tered.
Then, without even waiting for an answer to his
senseless query, he began to roll up his slicker and to
roll down his sleeves.
"We may as well hide the spade and the pick, up
here, somewhere,” suggested Barry. “No use to lug
them back and forth every time we come to the hill.
Let's put them safe away under some of this rubbish.
And,” he added, reprovingly, “let's locate them a bit
more sanely than you marked the trough where we
found the ingot. No use wasting half an hour, each
time we come up, looking for the tools. How's this?"
He thrust the spade and pick, side by side, in a deep
niche between two manzanita roots and brushed hand-
fuls of mold and leaves and twigs over them.
“Now, then," he went on, as he made mental mark
of the spot and of the adjacent landmarks, “I could
find these in the dark.”
"How about this ingot?” asked O’Rell. "Are we
going to take it back to the house or bury it safely
somewhere out here?”
Barry pondered. Then he said:
"If we take it home, the man who hid it and the
other ingot here will be sure to think we've got it. That
is, if such a congenital idiot ever does any thinking
at all. If he shows the same mixture of luck and
cunning he displayed last night, he'll not only look
for it at the house, but he'll stand a fair chance of
getting it, wherever it's hidden. I vote for burying
it, out here, somewhere in this clump. Not sticking it


212
BLACK GOLD
past million years. Fill up the trough where we found
the ingot, will you? Make it look as undisturbed as
you can. So! Now, let's get back home.”
First reconnoitering carefully, and making certain no
one was in sight or could possibly have seen them, the
two crept back through the thicket, the way they had
come; keeping the clump of bushes always between
themselves and the party of surveyors.
As they reached the foot of the hill, Dick spoke.
“Well,” he said, philosophically, “it isn't the two
hours of unalloyed gold digging I had planned for us.
But, anyhow, we got a bite before we even baited our
hooks. Mighty few Argonauts find a twelve-inch ingot
before they so much as start digging. If we got that
much, in ten minutes, we ought to land at least a million
dollars' worth, in a day of real hunting. Barry!" he
broke off, “all this thing is as queer as they make 'em.
It gives me a kind of spooky feeling. But it's a feeling
I like. And I'd rather play this merry little game than
clean up all the rice-fortunes that ever happened.
Wouldn't you?”
"No," said Barry, “I wouldn't. That isn't priggish-
ness. It's the truth. I suppose in every normal man
there's still left over a streak of the school boy. There
is in me, I know. And in you that streak is wider
than all the rest of you put together. Well, that same
streak in me makes me revel in this wild goose chase
of ours;—the way a kid revels in a detective story.
But the rest of me,—the real me,-says I'm a fool to
do this, and that you are, too; and that we'd be a lot


214
BLACK GOLD
People, outside of dime-novels and 'stunt-movies,' don't
try to kill other people; unless the desire to have those
people die is greater than their own fear of justice and
of their own consciences. Now, probably, Jones was
either insane "
"He wasn't,” denied Gale. “I'm doctor enough to
know that. He "
"Or there was perhaps some enormous fortune at
stake,” hazarded Dick, “or perhaps he loved the same
girl Smith loved or— "
"Or he didn't like the shape of Smith's haircut," sup-
plemented Barry. "Your explanations are brilliant,
Dick, Positively brilliant. The only trouble with them
is that they don't explain.”
He closed the subject with some slight abruptness.
One of O’Rell's random guesses had set his thoughts
to working. He remembered what Maida had said
about Naylor's being “always at her elbow," since her
arrival at her father's place.
Then, at once, he dismissed the idea as absurd. For,
when Naylor had fired twice at him, down in the gorge-
mouth, the secretary could not possibly have known
of his acquaintance with Maida. No, Dick's theory
was ridiculous. And Gale strove to put the whole
inexplicable affair out of his mind.
The cousins separated at the outer gate of the ranch.
Barry was due for a morning at the rice paddies. And
O’Rell was bound for the "ewe camp," a mile to south-
ward, to oversee the docking of the lambs.
Gale went first into the house, there to leave his
slicker and Dick's; and to release Roy, who was still


BLACK GOLD
215
vastly indignant at his master's refusal, earlier in the
morning, to take the collie along on the treasure trip to
Gopher Hill.
As he entered the house and deposited the two use-
less slickers on their pegs and examined Roy's eyes
and nostrils for traces of last night's baptism of cayenne
pepper, Barry was pondering on his wisest course with
regard to Naylor's letter of the evening before. He
was to have ridden with Maida this morning. In view
of her father's prohibition, he could not well go to the
Drace house. As he stood, irresolute whether to tele-
phone Maida, explaining to her the cause of his non-
appearance or whether a note would have more chance
of reaching her, in case Naylor or Drace should come
to the telephone, his ears caught the sound of a light
tap-tap-tap on the walk, leading to the house.
He recalled the sound, readily, from the preceding
day; and went to meet the messenger whose agile cane
heralded, as before, his approach. Barry opened the
front door, just as the irreproachably-clad Sludge was
feeling his way up the steps; his list slippers groping
like sensitive hands at each stair.
"Good morning, sir," said the valet, touching his
shining derby hat, as he heard Gale's first tread on the
veranda flooring. “Mr. Drace tried to reach you by
telephone, an hour ago; but he could not get any
answer. So he sent me here with this note.”
The correct valet spoke almost reproachfully; as
though rebuking Barry for sleeping too soundly to
hear a telephone bell; and thus entailing on the blind
man so long a walk.


216
BLACK GOLD
"Mr. O’Rell and I have both been out and-and
busy,—since before sunup,” explained Barry, as he
reached wonderingly for the note Sludge had exhumed
from an inner pocket and was proffering to him. “No
one was left here, except our Chinaboy. Chang has
a mortal horror of telephones. He'd rather throw over
his job than answer one. He always stops his ears
when our 'phone rings. I believe he thinks they are
magic. Lots of Chinks do, you know. I'm sorry you
had this long trudge, though.”
As he took the envelope from the primly gloved
fingers of the blind man, he put a half-dollar in the
valet's hand. Sludge touched his hat again.
"Thank you, sir," he said; adding: “Mr. Drace told
me there was no answer.”
"Mr. Drace gave you this, himself ?” asked Barry.
“Or did Mr. Naylor?”
"Mr. Drace, sir," returned Sludge. "He gave it to
me, himself; and he told me to take it to you at once
and that there was no answer. Good morning, sir."
Once more touching his hat, the valet swung about
and departed; feeling his way down the walk and out
into the road, with the swift sureness which had awak-
ened Gale's admiration on the man's former visit.
Without waiting for Sludge to go, Barry had already
torn open the envelope. Within was a single sheet of
paper; not typed, this time, but written in a slightly
shaky and cramped hand.
"My dear Mr. Gale,” Barry read. "Since instructing
my secretary to send you the letter which you received
from him last evening, it has occurred to me that you


BLACK GOLD
217
might not consider as personal my plea that all out-
siders refrain from calling at my home, here. There-
fore, at the risk of seeming more than necessarily dis-
courteous, I am herewith endorsing his letter.
“May I request that you accept this as a definite
refusal to receive you at my home; and that you
furthermore will regard this cessation of acquaintance
as applying to my daughter as well as to myself? She
concurs in this request. Very truly yours, JARED
DRACE.”
Long and dazedly, Barry Gale stood, staring down at
this strange epistle. Not content with ordering him, by
proxy, to keep away, the financier had apparently
thought it needful to cinch matters by a personal letter;
-a letter forbidding him to continue his acquaintance
with Maida as well as with her father!
Alternately indignant and sore perplexed, Barry read
the note over and over again. To see Maida no more!
Everything in him rebelled fiercely at the mandate.
"She concurs in this request!"
It couldn't be! Why, what had he done to merit this
brutal dismissal? Maida had seemed so unfeignedly
glad to be with him again! Was her father lying?
It didn't seem likely. Yet-
Twice, Barry strode toward the telephone. Once
he sat down to write to Maida demanding a reason for
her action. But still he was irresolute and raging, when
Roy proceeded to create a diversion.
The collie had been lying in the open front doorway,
in the sunlight; lazily blinking down the yellow road.


218
BLACK GOLD
Now, all at once, he broke into a loud fanfare of bark-
ing.
Gale glanced carelessly through the doorway, to learn
the reason for the outburst.
Then, his idle glance grew fixed and blank. And a
gasping shiver of incredulous amazement surged
through him.


220
BLACK GOLD
to a halt at the girl's side. He reared himself on his
hind-legs, placing his white forepaws lightly on the
saddle-cloth and laying his silken head against Maida's
knee. She stooped and patted the smooth gold-and-
white head; laughing down into the upraised brown
eyes, and crooning friendly words to him in a tone
that set the dog's plumed tail to waving in wide sweeps
of ecstasy.
Thus, once in fifty times, will the most aloof collie
give his eager friendship to a stranger;-and, for some
unknown reason, that stranger is almost invariably a
woman.
Maida ceased patting the collie's head and held out
her trimly-gauntleted little hand to Barry Gale, as he
ran up.
“Of all the lazy farmers !” she scoffed. "Here I
spent a solid half hour trying to get you on the tele-
phone! And you were so sound asleep you didn't even
hear. So I decided I'd either have to ride alone or
else stop by here on my way to Red Bluff and take
a chance that you might be awake at last. I hope I
didn't rouse you too early?"
"I've been out since hours before you even so much
as thought of waking up,” he retorted, in like vein, his
heart bounding with joyous reaction from his recent
despondency. “I've been up and out, for hours. I
just got in, about twenty minutes ago. Chang, our
Chinaboy, won't answer 'phones. Not guilty!"
His words about Chang reminded him that he had
made this same explanation, not half an hour earlier,


BLACK GOLD
221
to Sludge. And into his memory, afresh, came Drace's
note.
"She concurs in this request!!
She “concurred” with Drace in demanding that
Barry see her no more? And yet, of her own glorious
free will, here she was at his gate! The man's mind
buzzed, in vain effort to understand. Meanwhile, she
was saying:
“I told you I'd try to go riding with you this morn-
ing. Then I found I had to stop at Red Bluff and
do some shopping, that couldn't wait. And I thought
I'd go down there on horseback. I didn't know whether
you'd be willing to change our ride into a shopping tour.
I believe men hate shopping, don't they? So I called
up, to ask if you'd mind riding there with me and-
and perhaps playing about in your beloved Farm
Bureau, there, or asking conundrums of the County
Agent or something, while I shop. Do you mind?”
"Do I?" repeated the ecstatic Barry. “Do I?
Watch me and see. . . . Ohé, Chang!” he shouted;
adding, as the Chinaboy stuck his head out of a side
window, like a yellow and pigtailed cuckoo from its
clock-door, "Saddle up Señora, on the jump; and bring
her around here!”
"Too lazy even to saddle your own horse!" reproved
Maida, in mock horror. “Of all the indolent lives for
a live man to lead! I wonder you don't make Chang
ride her, too, and save you the trouble of "
"I'm too lazy to do a single blessed thing that will
take me away from you for two whole minutes, now
you're here!” he said, with the boyish laugh she re-


222
BLACK GOLD
membered so happily in the old Baltimore days and
had not heard from his lips since their new meeting in
California. “You aren't really here, you know. I'm
not even certain you're this side of the Sierras. It's
all a gorgeous dream. But while it lasts, I'm not
going to lose any of it by chasing off and saddling
Señora when I can be with you. I always knew I'd
strike treasure out here, in California. But I never
struck it till you came. And now, if that speech isn't
worthy of any feeble-minded schoolboy of ten, I'll
think up one that is.”
He was deliriously happy, at this unexpected sight
of her; in the very hour when he had dreaded morbidly
that he might never again see her. And he talked as
garrulously as Dick O’Rell himself. Maida, listening,
and watching his transfigured face, flushed deeply. She
looked down at her hand, Barry's eyes followed the
direction of hers. To their mutual amazement, they
saw that he had not released his first eager grasp of
her slender fingers.
Reluctantly, Gale let go of the little hand he had
been holding. He glanced up at her in apology. But,
in so doing, he surprised a look in her dark eyes that
struck him dumb and athrill. Instantly the girl lowered
her fringed lashes over the momentarily telltale eyes.
"Maida !” breathed the man, tensely,—fervidly,
“Maida!"
And then, as fate (or common sense) would will it,
appeared Chang.
· Up the short driveway from the stable trotted the
Chinaboy, leading by the bridle the temperamental


224
BLACK GOLD
run with his adored deity and with the delightful new
human friend who knew how to croon at him in the
queer sweet high tone that dogs love; and who knew
just where under the ears a collie likes best to be
scratched. Yet, not for an instant did it occur to him
to disobey. Implicit obedience was one of the few
things Barry had bothered to teach him. And as the
lessons had begun in puppyhood, they had been learned
without the help of blows or threats.
"Oh, can't he come along?" pleaded Maida, touched
by the dog's utterly crestfallen air, and by his perfect
obedience. “Can't he? He's so splendid! And I know
he wouldn't do any harm.".
"Of course he wouldn't do any harm," assented
Barry. "I'm not worrying about that. But plenty of
harm might be done to him. At one ranch, down
below here, the slogan is: 'Shoot every dog that crosses
our line! And, down at Red Bluff, in the past year or
two, dozens of good dogs have been poisoned. One
of them, only last week. A dog that his little crippled
master used to hitch to a cart and drive around with.
I don't want to risk any hurt coming to Roy. He
means too much to me.”
"How brutal!" she cried. "How horrible! Oh, the
poor, gentle, brave, harmless dogs! To shoot them
and poison them! It's "
"It isn't usually done out of malice," explained
Barry. "At least, not in Northern California. You
see, a very few stray dogs worry sheep. So there are
lots of people who think all dogs ought to suffer for
those few. They claim that if there weren't any dogs,


228
BLACK GOLD
of yours. He can't stop my seeing you, somewhere or
other, if you'll let me. We're both of age, and "
"Please, Barry!" she begged, her voice trembling
ever so little. “Please believe my father had nothing to
do with such a note as you say Wolfe Naylor wrote
you. I-I don't want to explain. But he hadn't. Mr.
Naylor must have done it on his own responsibility.
Father would be furious if he knew such a thing had
been written to any friend of mine. Promise me you'll
keep right on coming to see me, just as if you hadn't
gotten that absurd letter. My father— "
"I hate like toadpie to go on with this rotten line
of talk," said Barry, miserably. “But I've got to.
If I didn't, you wouldn't understand my not calling on
you any more. You'd think "
"Not calling on me any more?" she repeated, hurt
and surprised at his answer. “Why, Barry, surely
you won't be so foolish as to pay any attention to what
Mr. Naylor said ;-after what I've just told you;-and
after my saying Father never could have known of the
abominable letter!"
"Of course, I wouldn't pay an atom of attention
to Naylor's note," replied Gale, floundering, “after
you've told me it wasn't authorized. Only,-only- "
“Only what?" she insisted.
“Only,” went on Barry, reaching into his coat pocket
and drawing forth the crumpled sheet of note paper
he had thrust there instinctively on sight of Maida at
the ranch house gate, "only this seems to make it unani-
mous, so far as Mr. Drace and Naylor are concerned.
I wish I didn't have to show it to you, Maida. Hon-


BLACK GOLD
231
ragingly eager to clear such a man out of the path of
his own wooing.
That Drace should have yielded to his secretary's
wish,—and should have written this contemptible note,
involving herself in his dismissal of Barry, showed
Maida more clearly than had anything else how com-
pletely and hopelessly her father was under Naylor's
mysterious domination. It was conceivable that Drace,
for unknown business reasons, might have consented
to let the secretary stay on in his employ, after the
man's brutal love-making toward Maida. But she
found it hard to understand how Drace could have
been bullied or scared into forbidding any one the house
at Naylor's command. Least of all, a man whom, she
told her father, was an old and dear friend of her own.
And, she felt strangely alone in the world,-alone and
frightened and defenseless."
In this pitiful new mood she turned to Barry Gale,
eagerly, childishly, for help and support. He was so
strong, so fearless, so self-reliant! Maida's heart went
out to him in a great wave of yearning. Into her eyes,
again, sprang unbidden the look he had once before
surprised there. And it went through the lover like
the breath of God.
Out went his hand, instinctively, to clasp hers. But
before he could speak, the girl herself was speaking,
swiftly, impulsively, half-tearfully.
"Oh, Barry!" she cried. “I'm so unhappy,—so con-
fused! There's no one of my own for me to go to for
help or for sympathy. II have no right to tell you
what I'm going to tell you;—no right in the world, I


BLACK GOLD
233
“I can't make anything out of it, at all! It's no more
the way my father,—the dear old dad I'd always known
and loved,-it's no more the way I'd have expected
him to behave than,—than night is like this morning!
He is so horribly changed! And I can't see why. I
had dinner last evening and breakfast to-day in my
rooms. I couldn't sit at the same table with Mr.
Naylor. I couldn't! But after breakfast I went to
Father's study, when he was alone there for a minute;
and I asked if I could do anything for him. He just
shook his head and went on studying some reports on
his desk. So I came away. I- "
"I can't make head or tail of it at all,” said Barry,
speaking for the first time. "I've followed your
father's career fairly closely, through the newspapers
and through friends of his that I've known. And all
this queer secrecy and fear are as unlike him as they'd
be unlike Carnegie, himself. Why, in the first place,
should such a man have shut himself up in that god-
forsaken place and turned his back on all his old world?
Why should he—whose business and personal life have
been so aboveboard,—why should he have to cringe
before a swine like Naylor? Why should he surround
himself with armed guards, in a peaceful region like
this? What was the mysterious work his imported
laborers were busy at, so long, down in the gorge
off Iron Canyon ;-work that called for steel doors and
all that kind of thing, and that was so closely guarded
as to warrant Naylor in opening fire on a harmless
stranger like myself? What has aged and changed


234
BLACK GOLD
your father so? What is Naylor's hold over him?
If- "
"Sometimes,” she hazarded, timidly, "sometimes I
wonder if hard work and so many big enterprises have
-have touched Father's brain. He's som "
"No," denied Barry. “I'm still doctor enough to
know a sane man from a lunatic. Your father is as
sane as you are. Though, how long he'll stay so, under
this mysterious strain on him, I don't know. But that's
no business of mine,” he caught himself up. "The only
thing that concerns me is the effect of all this on you.
And "
"But what shall I do, Barry?" she asked, helplessly.
"What is there for me to do? I want so to be of use
to him, in this trial, whatever it may be. But how
can I? If— ”
"It is not the place for you to be in!” he declared,
incisively. “There's mystery and danger all around
that house. And you must get away from it. You
must go back to the East!”
He spoke with strong decision; yet the counsel he
gave was bitter to him; and it called for all the un-
selfishness in his makeup to insist on her going once
more out of his life. Nerving himself to his task, he
continued:
“You are not safe in the same house with a beast
like Naylor. You have no protection from your own
father. You must go back to New York.”
"Barry, I can't!" she protested. "If there is danger
or trouble, I can't leave Father out here, thousands of
miles away from his friends and his home, to bear it


BLACK GOLD
237
ds
"I loved you. I wanted you to be my wife. I was
poor,-dead broke,-a struggling young dub of a half-
starved doctor. I never stopped to think whether you
were as poor as I was or not. In my fatuous idiocy
it seemed to me that it would be a divine thing for
us to marry on nothing a year,—that it would give me
an incentive to forge ahead and win money and fame
for your sake.... That's the kind of a young fool
I was !”
He set his teeth and blundered on with his acrid con-
fession, still not daring to look at her.
"Then,—the night of your birthday dance," he said,
"Nell Carrington told me you were Jared Drace's
daughter. She had supposed I knew it. As if I would
have kept on coming to see you and let myself get
deep and deeper in love with you, if I'd known! She
said you were Jared Drace's daughter. In other words,
that I'd been planning to lay my penny-a-year future
and my presumptuous self at the feet of a girl who
could have bought and sold the whole street I lived in!
I wasn't in the fortune-hunting business," he finished,
bitterly. "So I cleared out. That's all. And I sup-
pose it's plenty. ... I'm—I'm sorry I've spoiled
your ride, this way.”
There was another silence, broken only by the
rhythmic dual thud-thud-thud of the horses' feet on
the flinty road. Barry did not yet dare look at the girl.
He felt oddly dull and apathetic. His close-guarded
secret of years was out. And after his blurted confesa
sion, of course, there could be no further hope of
continuing his wonderful association with Maida.


240
BLACK GOLD
hundred yards ahead of him, a man and a girl. They
had their backs to him and were going in the same
direction as himself. Yet he recognized the man as
Barry Gale. And he raised his tufted sorrel brows at
sight of the young rancher wasting such a fine work-
morning in company with any woman. For Barry had
not only the reputation of being a tireless and eternal
worker, but of having cast a blind eye on all the de-
cidedly pretty girls of the neighborhood.
Yet, here Gale was, in mid-morning, loafing along a
country road, as though he had the whole day before
him. Moreover, he was riding unnecessarily close
beside this trimly-habited young woman; and seemed
to be wholly absorbed in her society.
Again Romeyn's rufous brows hitched themselves
in wonder. And he prepared to put on a burst of
speed and to call out something jocular to the indolent
youth, in passing the two;—something about only rich
men being able to afford to squander a busy mid-week
morning in sparking. But, all at once, he changed his
purpose with excessive suddenness; and wellnigh
ditched his roadster while he stared goggle-eyed at the
pair ahead of him.
For, even as he watched them thus amusedly, he
heard Barry cry out with a wild happiness,-a cry
whose sound sent crinkly little thrills through the much-
married old fellow's calloused heart. And he saw Gale
sway toward the girl at his side and catch her bodily
in his strong arms.
He saw the girl's arms slip upward and around
Barry's neck, as their lips met. He saw them, thus,


BLACK GOLD
241
heart to heart and mouth to mouth, close interlocked,
for a long quarter-minute; while, by some miracle of
Cupid's, the two restive horses continued to plod evenly
along, side by side, and to leave the lovers free to
revel, to the full, in this, the first long kiss that sealed
their betrothal.
"If one of them hosses had of took it into his head
to shy or stumble or bolt,” dizzily mused old Romeyn,
as the two riders at length released each other and
looked guiltily about in quest of possible witnesses,
"there'd 'a been the grandest spill since the time the
Cross-Country Express forgot to stop, when it got to
Oakland Ferry. Gee, but it must be grand to be young!"
“Oh!" ejaculated Maida, horrified, as a backward
glance revealed to her the approaching oldster in his
ancient-vintage car. "He must have seen! He must!
What will he think?"
"He won't think,' at all!” returned Barry, not even
troubling to look back. “He'll know. He'll know I'm
the luckiest and craziest happy man under the sun!
He'll ”
The rattle of the car cut in on his boyish exultation.
Romeyn swung past them, and grinned up, cheerily,
into the two embarrassed faces.
"Morning, Gale!” he sang out, slowing down his
roadster for a moment or two. “When I caught sight
of you, first, back around the bend, I figgered you was
wasting a whole passel of time, this bright day. But
almost right off I saw you wasn't wasting any time
at all;—not a split second of time was you wasting!
You was sure making hay while the sun shone! So


BLACK GOLD
243
Keep on remembering that. We're-we're engaged,
and We are engaged, aren't we, Barry?”
"But- " he began, in one last lingering struggle
of his good resolves.
"Barry!" she chided, plaintively, “wasn't it humil-
iating enough for me to have to propose to you, with-
out your piling up senseless objections and— ”.
"You didn't propose to me!” he denied, vehemently.
"I "
"Didn't I? Well, I shall, unless you stop trying to
cloud the wonderfullest happy hour in all history by a
mass of glumly senseless scruples. If you care more
for your pride than you care for me ”
“There comes another car," interrupted Gale, sur-
rendering once and forever, and insanely rapturous in
this smashing of his ancient gods of self-respect and
pride, “and perhaps it might be nice to announce our
engagement to its occupants as we did to Romeyn, just
now. - "
"Barry Gale!" she expostulated, in horror, drawing
far away from him, lest, a second time, he bring her
to public confusion. “If you dare, if you dare !"
"I've heard that women love daring in a man,” he
teased, edging Señora nearer to her.
In laughing terror, the girl drew her mount far to
one side of the road, threatening Gale with her crop and
glaring at him with all the malignant fury of a three-
month Persian kitten. The two were gorgeously
happy. And their happiness made them light-headed;
- or what the Scots call "fey."
The world was a marvellous place to do one's living


244
BLACK GOLD
across
in. A miracle had brought them together, from across
the entire Continent; and had this day made them one.
Small marvel that they were more like two children
newly released from a grim school than like sedate
grown-ups!
The car, of which Barry had just spoken, was com-
ing from the direction of Red Bluff. It was traveling
fast, toward them. And, now, fifty yards away, its
driver clapped on the brakes. Gale and the girl glanced
toward the automobile to see the cause of this sudden
slowing down.
The car's driver and sole occupant was Wolfe Nay-
lor. Returning from a business call at the Red Bluff
bank, he saw ahead of him the two riders. Even as
he recognized them, through the light haze of dust
that hung over the road, he saw Barry reach toward
Maida, one arm outstretched.
He saw the girl recoil, drawing her horse far to one
side and menacing Barry with her upraised crop. The
welt of such a crop was still hot and painful athwart
Naylor's own sallow cheek. And at the sight of Gale's
seeming repulse, his heart beat quick.
Slowing his car, as he approached them, he took one
hand from the steering wheel and slipped his groping
fingers into his hip pocket. Then drawing to a halt,
abreast of the two amazed lovers, he jumped to the
ground and confronted them.
"If this man is annoying you, Miss Drace," he said,
truculently, "I- "
Despite his hatred and utter disgust for the man,
Barry could not for the life of him refrain from a


CHAPTER TEN
CAIDA, warned by the glint in Wolfe Naylor's
Y little eyes, acted wholly on instinct. Even be-
fore the pistol itself glittered in the secretary's hand,
before he could level it at Barry,—she had drawn taut
her horse's bridle and had dug the spur deep into the
mount's shining black side.
As she applied the spur, she reined sharply to the
right. The restive black, indignant at such gross mal-
treatment, obeyed with a whirl of his nervous body the
dual urge of spur and of bit.
Veering swiftly to the right in answer to the jerk-
ing rein, he swung his flank with full, if unconscious,
force against Naylor's body.
The secretary's back was to the horse; and his whole
mind was concentrated in his mad impulse toward the
man who had just boasted of winning the girl he
himself so fiercely craved. Goaded to sudden insane
action by Barry's words, he had whipped out the pistol
by instinct rather than by conscious act. He himself
did not know whether he meant to shoot, and to risk
the death penalty by killing this enemy in the presence
of a dangerous witness, or if the motion were of mere
threat.
The pistol was out, before Naylor realized what he
was doing. And, as he leveled it,-before the thunder-
struck Barry could make the first move to defend him-
246


BLACK GOLD
247
self,—a whirling object of great size and weight smote
the secretary on the left shoulder, knocking him clean
off his feet.
Hurled suddenly from his balance, he tumbled into
the road, on all fours. The pistol, released by the in-
voluntary outward fling of his fingers as he fell, rolled
into the wayside ditch.
Even before he sought to rise, Naylor threw him-
self forward along the ground, and grabbed for the
weapon. But he was a fraction of a second too slow.
Barry Gale's wits, momentarily dazed by the un-
foreseen onslaught, were awake again. Pushing
Señora forward across the road, and swooping down
from the saddle as he went, Gale snatched up the fallen
pistol.
He grasped it just as Wolfe Naylor's fingers were
closing around its butt. Straightening himself again
in the saddle, he watched Naylor clamber to his feet,
coated with dust. But, as he glanced down at the
secretary, his eye was caught by the pistol he had
salvaged from the ditch. And his brows bent, in be-
wilderment, as he looked at it.
On the black rubber butt were two small silver
letters: "W. N.”
Now, it was by no means odd that Naylor's pistol
should bear his initials. But, Barry recalled perfectly
that these same initials had been on the butt of the
pistol he had wrenched out of the secretary's fist, two
nights earlier, in Drace's study. That pistol he had
flung far away, into a bunch of bushes, a hundred feet
from the road; on his way home. The night had been


248
BLACK GOLD
pitch dark. No one could have seen him throw the
weapon away, nor, in that darkness, could have seen
where it landed. Nor could there be one chance of a
million that Naylor, passing along the fields, next day,
should have found it by accident. Yet here it was,-
or else another just like it and initialed in the same way.
“The fellow must keep a whole collection of mono-
grammed automatics,” thought Barry. "I don't won-
der. He needs to;—by the rate he loses them!”
Naylor had regained his footing. He stood glaring
up alternately at the startled and pallid girl, who was
trying to quiet her plunging horse, and at the rancher
who returned his glower with such level glance. Toying
with the pistol, Barry lowered his voice in an effort
to make his words intelligible to Naylor alone; and not
to Maida, whose horse was some yards away, still
passaging and curvetting, under memory of the spur.
Said Gale:
"It's none of my business, Mr. Naylor, of course.
But until you can calm your merry tendencies toward
homicide, you would do better to keep entirely away
from firearms. The first tinie I met you, down by the
gorge, you shot twice at me. The second time you saw
me, at the window in Mr. Drace's house, you reached
for your pistol. The third time,-in Mr. Drace's
library,—you drew a gun on me again, and I had to
take it away from you. I pass over the time you tried
to make my horse kill me and when you threatened
me with an ax. But now, on no provocation at all, you
draw a pistol on me again. It's getting to be a habit.
And if you keep it up, your chances for the electric


250
BLACK GOLD
Miss Drace. That gives me the right to see she is not
molested. And if I hear of your speaking to her
again, or so much as looking at her, I shall not only
give you the thrashing I've promised you, but I shall
make formal complaint to the County authorities at
Red Bluff that you tried to kill me; and I shall
have you jailed and brought to trial on a charge of
attempted murder. Understand that. It is a warn-
ing. Not a threat. Come, Maida,” raising his voice,
as she reined her scare-quieted mount alongside. "Shall
we ride on?"
A little to his surprise, Barry noted that the jail-
threat had an oddly disquieting effect on Naylor. The
man blanched, and seemed actually to cower under it.
And Barry wondered.
They left the secretary standing, white and snarling,
in mid-road; and cantered on.
"I couldn't hear very much,” said Maida, as she and
Gale trotted toward the town. “This horse of mine
resented the treatment I had to give him. All the while
I tried to listen to you, he kept plunging and whirling
around. And you spoke so low. So I missed most
of it. But- "
"I wanted you to miss all of it,” said he. “And I
want to tell you, too, what a splendid thing you did, by
swinging your horse against Naylor, when he flashed
that gun. It was a corking bit of presence of mind.
But I'd give a year's income to have saved you the
shock of seeing- "
“You were saying something to him about having
tried to kill you, before," she insisted. “What was


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251
it? Did you mean the time, there, at the gorge? Or
was there some other time?”
Reluctantly, under her crossfire of troubledly im-
perative questions, Gale told, bit by bit, of his various
clashes with the secretary. And though he had not
meant to tell, he realized, as he answered her insistent
queries, that soon or late, she must have been told.
He cut short her indignant exclamations of his recital,
and sought to shift the talk into calmer channels, by
saying:
"In another minute we'll be at the foot of the slope,
where Main Street starts. Look there, to the left,
where the Sacramento has cut deep into the reddish
bank at that turn of the river. They say the town
gets its name from that line of salmon-colored water-
side bluffs. And - "
"The moment I get home," she interrupted, refusing
to be turned aside from her theme, “I shall tell Father
not only what you've told me about Wolfe Naylor, but
that I myself saw him aim a pistol at you, to-day. And
Father will see he is sent away at once,—this very
day. I know he will. It's one thing to keep a useful
man who makes horrid love to one's daughter. But
it's quite another to let a would-be murderer stay on
in the house. And he'll— "
"If you are wise," urged Barry, "you'll say nothing
at all about it. If Mr. Drace would let Naylor stay on,
after he insulted you so, the chances are that he'd let
him stay, if every crime in the statute books were
proved against him. But, when you go home, I'm
going with you. I am going to beard the lion in his


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study-den. In other words, I'm going to tell your
father I've had the asinine presumption to ask his
daughter to marry me. In that way, I'll give him a
fair chance to kick me out of his house. And I won't
blame him for trying to do it, either. He- "
"No!” she forbade. “You mustn't. You'll ride with
me as far as the gates and you'll leave me there. If
you go to Father in that high tragedy spirit, there's
certain to be a row. I want to tell him, myself. I
can always manage Father. At least, I always used to
be able to. He's never refused me anything I wanted.
And, oh, Barry!" she finished, in a little rush of words,
"I do want you so very, very much!”
And, at the last, he gave in to her wish in the matter.
Two hours later they drew rein at the gates of the
Drace estate. Gale leaned toward her, as they parted;
and kissed her; their hands close clasped.
The next instant, both horses trembled violently and
snorted as in panic fear. As they did so, the riders
were aware of a jarring, seasick motion of the ground
beneath them. A faint rumble sounded from far off,
softer yet more ominous than thunder. And again the
very world seemed to heave slightly under their horses'
feet.
Maida reined in her scared mount and looked at
Barry in questioning wonder. The man's face was sud-
denly grave.
"Earthquake !” he said, tersely. “Just a mild shock,
of course,-all the few earthquake shocks, hereabouts,
are mild, -but an earthquake shock, for all that.
Don't be frightened. It isn't dangerous. Though for


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253
some reason it always has a queer effect on horses and
on most other animals. Don't let it make you uncom-
fortable.”
“An earthquake!” she exclaimed, more in childlike
curiosity than in any alarm. “I never felt one, before.
Do they happen very often, here?”
"No," he reassured her, "mighty seldom. Oftener
in the South. There probably won't be another in the
next five years. And they're always slight.”
"But if they could have an earthquake violent enough
to demolish San Francisco," she asked, "why not the
same kind of earthquake here?”
"Only that there hasn't happened to be any severe
one, in this region, for ever so long," said Gale, "and
there's never likely to be. And, by the way, if ever
you're talking to San Franciscans, for goodness' sake
don't speak of the 'earthquake.' Call it the 'fire.' They
don't like to hear that Nineteen-Six calamity called an
earthquake. Just as they don't like to hear their own
city called 'Frisco.' You're sure you won't change
your mind and let me ride in with you? Good bye,
then, sweetheart.”
He stooped and kissed her once more; then sat his
horse and watched her canter down the winding drive
until she disappeared around a turn. Slowly, he turned
Señora's head toward his own ranch.
As he rode, he chanced to glance eastward. Las-
sen's ten thousand feet of snowy bulk was no longer
etched vividly against the brilliant azure of the Califor-
nia sky. The mountaintop was lost in murk. Above
it belched and hung sullen dun clouds. Wavering fin-


254
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gers of brown-black smoke were creeping upward from
the invisible crater and across the eastern heavens.
Barry looked long and frowningly at the volcano.
As he still watched it, Señora snorted in terror, and
tried to bolt. And, at the same instant the road below
him trembled again. Far below, in his grazing
grounds, he could hear the wild stampede of his sheep;
and the sharp barks of Zit, as the little black dog hurled
himself among them and rounded them up.
"That was heavier than the first shock!" muttered
Gale. “Heavy enough to crack a window or two, I
should think. Maybe enough to send somebody's bad-
ly-built chimney toppling."
By the time he reached the grazing grounds, Zit had
brought his silly charges to a semblance of order; and
Señora herself was beginning to quiet down.
"La terre qui tremble !" sang out Toni, in much con-
cern and with a wealth of Gallic gestures, as his em-
ployer trotted past.
"Point de danger!" idly returned Barry, in passing.
"Soyez tranquille!”
He spoke with an unconcern he did not feel; and
on much the same principle that sometimes made Zit
yawn and pretend to snooze when a wave of incipient
fear swept the sheep. Barry knew his own seeming in-
difference to the phenomenon would do more to reas-
sure Toni than would all the calming arguments he
could offer.
To a man, newly engaged to the girl of his heart, it
takes more than a mere earthquake and the memory
of a drawn pistol, to dull the edge of his happiness.


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255
And, before he had turned in at the gate of the ranch
house, Barry Gale found himself singing blithely, and
off-key, in a way that made stray passersby turn to
look after him as he rode.
Dick O’Rell had not come home, when Gale sat down
to lunch. This did not worry the rancher; as he and
Dick seldom met at the noon meal. One or the other
of them was almost certain to be on some distant part
of the land; in which case a pocketed sandwich served
the absentee for luncheon. Yet, to-day, Barry regret-
ted his partner's absence. He wanted to tell him about
his engagement to Maida; and to gush in callow fash-
ion about her myriad charms. He felt as though he
had come out of long darkness into glorious light. And
he wanted to tell the whole world of his joy.
After lunch, Barry went out to the ranch labors he
had neglected so shamefully all morning.
"I'd hate to be a Mormon!” he mused. whimsically,
as he strode toward the paddies. "Think of all the
days' work they must lose, in courting !"
It was twilight when he got back to the house; hav-
ing caught up in a measure with his postponed tasks.
He was comfortably tired. Roy, who had been at his
heels all afternoon, did not share his master's sense of
physical well-being.
The collie was restless, uneasy, plainly in distress.
Instead of ranging the fields, he stuck close to Gale;
and at intervals whined and thrust his hot nose into
Barry's hand and looked up in mute appeal at the man.
Once or twice, as Gale paused to pat him or to seek the
cause of the dog's manifest uneasiness, Roy would


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glance fearfully to eastward, where Lassen tinged the
dusk with a smear of lurid glow. Then he would look
up again into Barry's face and whimper.
"I know, old chap!" soothed Barry, as they entered
the dooryard and as Roy's latest stare at the distant vol-
cano brought forth from his furry throat a sound that
only his innate pluck was able to transform from a
howl to an inquiring whine. “I know. The earth-
quake atmosphere and the eruption have got you.
They've got me, too. But let's try not to think about
them, shan't we? Just remember the old Scotch pro-
verb that says 'a collie has the brain of a man and the
ways of a woman!' and don't be a crybaby. Buck up!"
At the cheer in Gale's voice, the dog wagged his
plumed tail, and essayed a very gallant bark indeed.
The bark,-as a bark,—was a failure; even though the
intent was good. Fearless of any natural or normal
foe, yet this touch of the supernatural was beginning to
fray the collie's hair-trigger nerves. Like Señora and
Barry's sheep, Roy seemed to read a message in the
eruption and in the earthquake thrills that humans'
grosser senses could not grasp.
Dick did not respond to Barry's hail from the front
door. But the call brought Chang scuttling out from
the kitchen regions with word that O’Rell had returned
home half an hour earlier, and, not finding Gale, had
gone out again.
It was not Dick O’Rell's way, to set forth from the
house, once he had come back to it. He was a hard
worker. But when his day's toil was ended, he loved


BLACK GOLD
257
to lounge lazily on the porch or at the hearth, until
supper was ready.
Yet Barry thought he understood. Returning home,
and finding his cousin still out, Dick undoubtedly had
fared to Gopher Hill, to continue his obsessing pursuit
of digging for the elusive Ruggles' gold cache.
The day's happenings had driven the very thought
of that quest from Barry Gale's mind. Now, eager to
see Dick and to tell him the wondrous news, as well as
to have another try for the buried ingots, he hurried off
for the hill, through the gathering darkness. Not until
he had gotten to the very foot of the slope did he dis-
cover two vexing facts. First, that he had not brought
along his flashlight, which most assuredly would be
needed if any night-digging were to be done. Second,
that Roy had followed him and was breasting the
crumbly steep ascent at his side.
He had meant to leave the collie at home. For, on
so secret an enterprise, Roy's bark or even his crash-
ing plunges through the underbrush might call casual
outsiders' attention to the diggers' presence.
Now, glancing down at the dog in the faint lurid
light from the far off fire-mountain, Gale had not the
heart to send him all the way back. Instead, he pointed
to the ground. Instantly, at the familiar signal, Roy
dropped, and lay still.
"Stay there!" commanded Barry, gently, as he
stooped to pat the collie's head. “Stay there!"
And, leaving the sorely disappointed dog staring
wistfully after him, Barry mounted the dark hill. He
knew that, under any ordinary circumstances, Roy


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flung long and sinewy arms about Gale, and wrestled
with maniac vehemence to throw the rancher. But
Barry had the advantage of grip. In his instinctive
tackling of the Unknown, he had dived for his middle;
and had secured the underhold.
All the other's furious writhings and grappling
failed to shake this hold. Gale clasped his fingers be-
hind the small of his antagonist's back, and drove his
chin into the hollow under the other's collarbone; then
braced his feet for the terrible, if simple, oldtime wrest-
ling device that has cracked or maimed so many ama-
teur athletes' spines.
The process, in this underhold grip, is purely scien-
tific. By thrusting forward sharply with the chin,
against the adversary's collarbone or upper chest, and
at the same time forcing the imprisoned waistline for-
ward with the clenched handgrip, one of two results is
obtained; unless the hold can be broken or blocked.
Either the spine (forced outward from above and in-
ward from below) will succumb under the irresistible
strain, or else the tortured victim must save himself
by surrender or by a deliberate fall.
The Unknown battled with desperate strenuousness
and in dead silence. By every atom of strength and
trickery in his power he strove to break the merciless
hold. But Barry Gale was a strong man, in the pink
of condition and with a football record behind him.
Moreover, he was minded to punish his would be
slayer. And he was stung by the continuous mystery
of the attacks on him. Grimly he braced every muscle,


BLACK GOLD
261
and tightened to the point of anguish the pressure he
was exerting on the other's spine.
His foe tore at him, with talon fingers, to break the
grip. He twisted, serpentlike, in the steel grasp. He
stabbed with stiff forefingers at Gale's eyes, to blind
him. But Barry, with true fighting instinct, eluded the
foul tactics, and pressed his chin the more agonizingly
into the other's upper chest.
Presently, as they swayed and battled in their silent
and raging embrace of death, there amid the acrid-
smelling stems of manzanita, Gale heard his opponent
groan aloud. And he felt the straining muscles col-
lapse within his clasp. His assailant, through pain or
terror, apparently, had swooned.
Barry loosened his own death-tight grip, to allow the
supine man to slide to the ground. Instead, on the in-
stant the hold was loosened to the least degree, there
was a sudden thrill of life through the collapsed body.
Barry took warning, at once, and made to renew his
hold. But before he could tighten his arms the other
had ducked under them, with the speed of lightning
and plunged past him through the thicket.
Gale made a futile clutch at the darting body as it
dashed by. But he missed. And the reason for his
missing was the momentary glimpse he had gotten of
his adversary's face as the man sped past. The sight
jolted Gale into lightning-brief inactivity; and in this
flash of time he lost his one chance to capture the fugi-
tive.
For, as the man slipped, eel-like, through the
loosened underhold and sprang back, the two combat-


264
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gency!” he scoffed, half-aloud. "Here I had a gun in
my clothes; and a dog within call. And I didn't make
use of either of them! With one or both, I'd have been
able to lay him by the heels in no time!"
Bounding eagerly up the steep slope, came Roy;
overjoyed at the permission to rejoin his master;
gladder still for human companionship at an hour when
nature's mighty jests were shaking the earth and red-
dening the sky.
Together, dog and man made their way down to the
level ground and back to the ranch house. On their
arrival, Barry found Dick O’Rell had not yet reached
home. It was a little past the supper hour. In all their
years together Gale had seldom known his partner to
be late to his eagerly anticipated evening meal.
Barry stood, in the hallway, pondering; trying not
to let himself worry at O’Rell's odd lateness. His
mind was still haunted by the eyes of the mysterious
man there on the hill-shoulder; the man who had so
unaccountably traced the ingot to their house, the night
before, and who now had sought to kill Gale as the
rancher was exploring the spot whence the ingot had
been found.
But Barry was relieved, permanently, of one queer
dread that, against his will, had haunted him. This
creature with the mysterious luminous eyes was a hu-
man, like himself. There was nothing supernatural
about him. It had been solid and muscular flesh-and-
blood which had writhed so furiously in Gale’s grip.
Somehow, this knowledge was soothing. But there
was nothing soothing in Dick O’Rell's almost unprece-


BLACK GOLD
265
dented lateness. And, despite himself, Barry worried
over it.
Just as he was telling himself he was a fool and
an old Betty to allow himself to fret over a wholly
natural thing like a man's tardiness in coming home to
supper, the telephone bell in a corner of the hall rang
with sharp insistence.
Annoyed at his own startled haste, he ran to the in-
strument; prepared to hear Dick's voice in a request
that he wait supper no longer for the absentee, but save
something cold for his return. But it was not O’Rell
whose summons to the telephone had broken in on
Barry's suspense. It was Maida Drace.
"Is that you, Barry?" she called, in answer to his
hello; and before he could speak she hurried on:
“Oh, come here as quickly as you possibly can, Barry!
Come, NOW!"
"What is it?” he asked in quick alarm at the break
in her tone and at the stark terror which underlay her
words. “What is wrong?”
"I–I can't explain, over the telephone !" she made
answer. “But come! Come as quickly as you can.
It-it's terribly important!"
"I'll be there as quickly as Señora can carry me!” he
promised. “And, whatever's the matter, you're not to
be frightened. Whatever it is, we'll straighten it,
somehow."
He turned away from the telephone, and caught up
a flashlight from the table. His face and his heart
were full of indefinable fear for the girl he loved.
She, who had shown mere curiosity at the earth's


266
BLACK GOLD
trembling, and who had intervened, unafraid, between
himself and Wolfe Naylor's pistol, she was in dire
fear. And she was calling for him!
As Barry left the instrument, he found Toni at his
elbow. The Basco had come in by way of the wide
open front door, without knocking; and stood watch-
ing his employer with troubled interest. He could
have understood no word of the telephone conversa-
tion; but Barry's intonations and his clouded face spoke
clearly enough of something far out of the way.
The herder's own dark visage took on a look of
unhappy concern, as might that of a dog which saw
its master was in distress. He backed toward the door,
mumbling, in his barbarous Pyrenees dialect :
"I came for liniment for a lamb that was crushed
against the side of the fold when the sheep jostled
each other, just now, at the earth's shaking. But it
can wait, if you are in haste. Can I help you, mon
maitre?"
“Yes," replied Barry, without pausing in his fast
progress through the house and toward the stable.
"You can tell Mr. O’Rell, when he comes back, that
I have gone to Mr. Drace's house. He can call me
up, there, if he needs me for anything. I don't know
when I shall be back. Chang will get you the lini-
ment."
He called the words over his shoulder; Toni follow-
ing along to hear them. In another minute, Gale had
flung a saddle on Señora and was thundering out along
the road toward the Drace estate. In his ears, as he


BLACK GOLD
267
rode, echoed the strange tone of fright in Maida's
voice. And, he wondered much at its cause.
For a moment he fancied there might have been a
distressing scene with her father over the tidings of
her engagement to so obscure an outsider as himself;
and that she was summoning her lover to add his pleas
to hers. Then, knowing Maida as he did, he dismissed
this notion as unlikely; and sought further for the ex-
planation.
Into the gray State highway he galloped; and along
it; Señora's ringing avalanche of hoofbeats waking
echoes from hill to hill, as she swept on. Above, the
crawling pall of murk from Mount Lassen had by this
time covered the whole sky; blotting out all the stars
and plunging the world into thick darkness;-a dark-
ness relieved only by the ever-brighter and more fre-
quent pulses of lurid glare from the volcano-pit.
Giving Señora her head and trusting only to her
horsesense to make her keep the road, Barry urged her
on. And the highspirited mare needed scant urging.
By a gleam from the volcano, Gale saw just ahead
of him the driveway, leading through the trees to
Drace's squat gray house. He turned the mare into
the drive. And again, her horse sense kept her in the
roadway, despite its many turns and twists.
As he came out into the little hummock-strewn clear-
ing, in front of the house, Gale saw there were lights
only on the ground floor. By their ray, he guided his
sweating mare to a shed at the corner of the stables;
hastily tied her there, out of the wind.
He ran across the clearing to the house. Not a


270
BLACK GOLD
speak. And he told me the story I'm going to tell you.
Perhaps I'd better begin it at the very beginning; the
way he did.”
She drew a long, quivering breath, and continued :
“Three or four years ago, Father and one or two
other financiers decided,—from the way things were
going in Europe and here,—something about the shaki-
ness of national credits and the inflation of currency,
and other things that are more or less Greek to me,
they decided that gold was the one standard of value
which could never collapse; and that the more all the
other forms of currency and securities, and all that,
should collapse, the higher would be the value of gold
and the harder it would be to get gold. So, with
Father in charge of the syndicate, they began to buy
up as much of the gold supply as they could get hold
of. They were going to hold it until a panic or a
national crash of some kind, and then sell it at an
enormous profit. One of the men died, and the two
others backed out, after a while. But Father kept on.
That's just like him. He never gives up a plan, once
he is launched on it. He bought in the other men's
supply; and presently he had a little more than twenty
million dollars' worth of gold, all his own.”
Barry whistled, under his breath, his mind stagger-
ing at the magnitude of the sum. Maida went on:
“He was afraid the government might commandeer
this gold, in case of a general panic. I believe there's
some law, isn't there, against keeping great quantities
of gold out of circulation? So he had it melted, se-
cretly, into bars, of different sizes and weights, and


274
BLACK GOLD
you had seen and that you'd tell. And he wanted you
put out of the way. He said," with an involuntary
shudder, “that it would be better to kill you and hide
you away than to have a gang of holdups or a band of
Federal agents swooping down on the gold, as they
would if you should say what you had seen. He didn't
know you hadn't been standing on that ridge above
the gorge, for several minutes, watching them. The
guard Mr. Naylor had placed there, on the ridge, had
come down to help hoist some of the gold from the
trucks into the vault. Then, Father says, Mr. Naylor
was all the more convinced you were spying on him,
because afterward he saw you watch the moving of
more of the gold from the cellar to the trucks. That's
why he attacked you, when he met you in the library."
“Never mind about me,'' suggested Barry. "I think
I can piece together as much of the story as concerns
myself. Go ahead with the rest of it.”
"Then,” she went on, with a trace of reluctance,
"came the the time I told you about,—when Mr.
Naylor made love to me. Father was furious at him
and ordered him to leave. Mr. Naylor went into the
study, instead, and explained very calmly that Father
could not get rid of him. He explained that a word
from him would bring the authorities down on the
place; or that an interview from him in any newspaper
would set all the robbers in America to making efforts
to steal the gold. He went on to say that the guards
were men he himself had chosen and that he had chosen
them carefully. He said they were devoted to him;


BLACK GOLD
275
and that at a word from him, they'd gladly help him
snatch the gold from Father.”
"Did the blackmailing cur say that?” cried Barry.
“The !"
“There were only two things Father could do," re-
sumed Maida, her sweet voice kept steady by manifest
effort. “He could defy him to do his worst,—and be
robbed of the vast wealth he had piled up with such
care and which had come to mean so terribly much to
him. Or he could let Mr. Naylor stay on here, until
such time as we could find a way out of the man's
power ;-until Father could communicate with some
colleague in the East whom he could trust; and have
the gold hidden somewhere else. You know, this gold
speculation is only one of Father's several big ven-
tures. It doesn't represent the bulk of his fortune, he
says;-even though he has turned his back on all his
other enterprises till this one could be put through.
And. when he set out on this gold-hoarding, the spirit
of the gold itself hadn't yet gotten into his blood.
Well, as I told you, there were two things he could do.
And he chose the course that would save his beloved
gold from peril.
"You mustn't blame him," she hastened on. "It had
become a real obsession with him. And besides, as I
said, he can never bear to give up any course he has
once firmly embarked on. That's one of the reasons
for his success, I think. So he pretended to yield to
Mr. Naylor's wishes. Even while he loathed him. He
tried to make me promise to be civil to him; but I
couldn't be. Mr. Naylor seemed willing to wait for me
for his sure wishes. Even
he civil to hi


276
BLACK GOLD
to change my feelings toward him. So Father thought
we could have a breathing space, till he could figure
out some way of getting free from the fellow's power.
For the moment, he couldn't do anything; unless he
wanted to lose his gold. And things rested that way,
till this noon."
Again she paused. Then, more firmly, she con-
tinued:
"Mr. Naylor came back here after we met him in
the road, outside of Red Bluff, to-day. He went
straight to the study. Father says he was perfectly
insane with rage. He told Father you and I were en-
gaged; and he ordered Father not only to break off the
engagement, but to force me to marry him. As if he
could! He said he was sick of waiting; and of seeing
another man making love to me. He gave Father his
choice of letting me marry him or of losing the gold.
And Father behaved splendidly."
"It was high time!" commented Barry;—but he did
not say it aloud.
"When it came to a question of losing the gold or of
wrecking my life," said Maida, “all the strange ob-
session dropped away from him; and he became his
old self. He refused. And he challenged Mr. Naylor
to do his worst. They had a horrible quarrel over it.
It lasted for hours. Mr. Naylor bullied and threatened
and even entreated. But Father was firm about it, all
through. He had become sane; now that it was my
life-happiness which was at stake. At the very last,
Mr. Naylor said: 'By sunrise, the vault down there
will be empty!' And Father answered, quietly: 'If it


BLACK GOLD
277
is, then by sunset you will be in prison, along with the
guards you've corrupted.' Wasn't it fine of Father,
though!""
“Yes," admitted Gale. “But what "
"Mr. Naylor just looked at him, a second, and then
said: 'If there aren't any witnesses against us, no one
can jail us or guess what we have done. I've discharged
the Chinaboys, to-day. Sludge is blind and doesn't
count. That's why you brought him out here. As for
Miss Maida,—well, a wife can't testify against her own
husband. And she's going to be my wife, by to-mor-
row. You won't testify against us. Because you won't
be where you can do it. That disposes of any wit-
nesses.' Then he went out. And Father called to me.
He "
"Do you think — ?” began Gale, choking with
mingled rage and amazement.
"I don't know what to think!” wailed the girl.
“That's why I telephoned you. I believe Father is in
terrible danger. Wolfe Naylor is capable of getting
the gold; and then of killing him, to keep him from
setting the law after the thieves. He's entirely cap-
able of it. I know that. He's desperate. The gold
has turned his brain. But,” she interrupted herself,
"what do you suppose he meant by saying I'd marry
him by to-morrow? That crazy speech alone proves
he's lost his mind. He must know I'd never marry
him! What— "
"It doesn't matter what he meant by saying it,” re-
plied Barry, white-lipped and grim. “Because, what-
ever he meant, he'll never get a chance to come within


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BLACK GOLD
a hundred feet of you. I swear that! Still, if you
think he'll carry out his threat of looting the vault, you
must telephone the police, at once. Why hasn't your
father done it?"
"He won't!" she sobbed. "I begged him to. But he
still has a faint hope that Mr. Naylor won't go so far.
And by telephoning the police, he would give away the
secret of the gold. So he just hesitates, and mutters to
himself, and cleans and loads that rifle of his. At one
moment, he says he'll give them a warm welcome if
they try to break into the house. And at the next, he
says he is going down to the gorge and stand guard
over the gold and kill the first of them that comes near
the vault. The strain has been too much for him.
He's hardly himself. He's capable of doing anything.
Oh, won't you go in and talk to him about it? Per-
suade him he ought to telephone the police, right
away! He "
“Yes," assented Barry, striding toward the study.
"I'll tell him so. If he won't do it, I'll telephone them,
myself.”
“The stables and the courtyard and even the bar-
racks all seem deserted,” she said, as she followed him.
“I looked out of the windows and— ”
He threw ajar the study door. A table light was
burning. The room was empty. One of the windows
stood wide open. On its catch was a shred of grayish
cloth;-remnant of the suit Barry remembered Drace's
wearing when he had visited the room before.
"He's gone!” exclaimed Gale; as Maida cried out.
"No," he added, noting her terror and seeking to


BLACK GOLD
279
quiet it. “They haven't got him. He left the room of
his own accord. See, there are no signs of violence.
And we were right in the hall, next to the study. We'd
have heard. He went, himself; and in a hurry; and,”
after another exploratory glance, "he took his rifle
with him. He ".
“That means he's done as he threatened and gone
down to the gorge,” cried Maida, “to stand guard over
the vault! Oh, what chance will such a poor frail old,
man have against- ?".
“I don't know what chance he'd stand, alone,” broke
in Barry. “But he's not going to be alone. He can't
have had more than a very few minutes' start, if he
was still here when I came. I'm going after him.
We'll see this through, together, he and I. Now, tele-
phone the police, sweetheart, as quickly as you can!
I'm off! Good bye. Here!” turning back from the
window as he was about to jump through to the
ground. “Take this thing; in case any of them come
back while I'm gone. Take it. And as soon as you've
telephoned, lock yourself in some room that has a
good stout door. Good bye!”
As he spoke he thrust into her trembling hand the
automatic pistol he had taken from Wolfe Naylor.
But her eye had fallen on a sheet of paper, pinned in
the centre of the wide red blotter on the table. And
she read aloud :
"I've gone down there to keep watch. Don't be
frightened, little daughter. I have handled worse situ-
ations. I am still their master, and I'll prove it to


BLACK GOLD
281
that size so valueless, that two bars could have been
dropped by the wayside in transit and left there ne-
glected for the first passerby to pick up and to cache on
Gopher Hill.
But, in his mad haste, he had scant scope for think-
ing. He sped on; not forming any definite plan of ac-
tion to be carried out when he should reach the gorge.
Once, he blamed himself for having come through the
woods on foot, instead of making better time by riding.
But, as he tripped over tree-roots and collided with
boulders, he realized how poor progress Señora or any
other steed could have made over such a course.
Again, as he ran, he paused for an instant. It
seemed to his keyed-up senses that he heard someone
running through the woods behind him. But as he
listened, he caught no further sound of steps; and he
hastened on again, sure he had been mistaken. A
second time, nearly at the gorge's edge. he listened.
For his brain had tricked him into thinking he heard
not only the impact of running feet but the tread of a
horse, somewhere in the wooded forest he had just
traversed.
But now, he had no further heed to give to imagi-
nation's antics. For he was breasting the upcurled lip
of the gorge, some hundred yards from its lower open-
ing. Keeping along this crest, he ran for the gorge
mouth, where the vault had been dug.
Here, free from trees and with only a few stray
chapparal clumps scattered about, the glare from the
ruddy sky made his way plainer. He pocketed the


282
BLACK GOLD
flashlight, and ran cautiously among the basalt bould-
ers and over the rubble.
Mount Lassen, to the left, was glowing like an evil
furnace. An indefinable throbbing sound pulsed
through all the air. The wind had fallen; and the
chilly night atmosphere hung heavy as wet leather and
almost as hard to breathe. Ahead, and with its source
hidden by the rise of ground, flared a suffused light
that was not from the sky.
Clambering over a mighty cropping of rock, Barry
was on top of the gorge mouth, and looking into the
hollow fifty feet below him. He halted, lying flat; and
stared directly down at the queer scene at his feet.
There was a group of gasoline flares set in the earth,
some few feet from the cut the laborers had blasted in
the bottom of the gorge. By their waveringly bril-
liant glow, Barry could see the great steel door of the
vault, standing wide open. On the ground directly in
front of the door was a small pile of black bars and of
fat and bumpy canvas sacks.
Apparently, the looting of the vault was well under
way;-or had been until a very recent interruption had
checked it, temporarily. His own head and body still
in darkness, on the bush-strewn summit of the gorge,
Barry could see with sharp distinctness everything that
went on in the flare-lighted area below him. And, at
a glance, he saw what had caused the interruption in
the looting process.
Standing a little in front of the opened vault,-his
bared head erect, his tired old eyes flaming, his white
hair dank about his livid face,-Jared Drace was con-


284
BLACK GOLD
fore he could rise or even brace himself on the slip-
pery rock-edge, his feet were swung from the ground;
and his whole body was propelled forward over the
edge of the cliff.
With a frantic clutch to save himself from the fifty-
foot drop on the head among the stones below, his fin-
gers closed about a tiny bush that jutted out from a
pocket of dirt on the rock. The fragile shrub came
away in his grasp. Yet, first, it had enough resisting
power to enable him to fling himself to one side and to
frustrate that first fierce thrust of the hands which
grasped his ankles.
The aggressor threw all his strength into a second
heave of the helplessly prone rancher's body. But be-
fore he could exert the leverage he required, another
figure,-indistinct as the first,-flashed out of the
gloom, behind, and flung itself upon the assailant.
Barry, swinging around, as the hands suddenly re-
leased his ankles, got to his feet, and bent over the two
madly wrestling bodies.
The struggle was of wildcat intensity. But it was
as brief as it was deadly. The nwecomer had taken
Barry's opponent by surprise. Moreover, he seemed
possessed of herculean strength. In a mere handful of
seconds, he had the other man helpless on his back, with
one arm under him and the other pinned to his chest
by his victor's knee.
Then, in tigerish ferocity, the conqueror dug his ten
fingers into his fallen antagonist's windpipe. There
was a hideous gurgling sound from the victim; as the


286
BLACK GOLD
There could be no mistaking those eyes. The man
who had been haunting him, so mysteriously,—the man
who had stolen the ingot from the ranch house living
room and who had thrown Roy off the scent by cay-
enne,—the man who had striven to kill him in the man-
zanita clump and again, a minute ago, here on the lip
of the cliff,—this mystic enemy lay pinioned and in
agony at his feet!
Then, as Barry gazed in wonder,-as the merciless
white flashlight rays poured into the conquered man's
face,—those strange luminous eyes underwent a mi-
raculous change.
At contact with the powerful light, a swift gray film
spread itself over the eyes;—the film that covers no
eyes save those of the blind.
And Sludge, the sightless and severely correct valet,
was lying there, gurgling and strangling in Toni's iron
grip!
"A-a-a nyctalops!” stammered Gale, in bewild-
ered incredulity; the lore of clinic and of professional
practice coming back to him as he stared. "A nyc-
talops! The second I've seen in all my life! I don't
believe there are three of them in America !"
His excited memory ranged back to a day during his
last year at Johns Hopkins. To the class in Optics,
the professor of that study had introduced a blind man
whose unseeing eyes were filmed. The room had been
plunged into darkness. Three minutes later, a light
had been turned on the subject's face. And his eyes
had been as the eyes of normal men; but more luminous
and somewhat larger. Then, as the light smote his sen-


BLACK GOLD
287
sitive pupils, the film had covered them protectingly,
again.
“Nyctalopia,” had droned the professor (who was
a positive genius at making interesting and unusual
themes appear as dry as dust) "nyctalopia, as I have
explained to you, gentlemen, is an abnormal condition
of the visual nerve-centers, which permits of vision
only in such markedly tempered light as that of evening
or complete night time. In the presence of even mod-
erate illumination the subject is completely blind. The
condition is found among certain African tribes far
more commonly than in civilized countries; though in
the latter it is met with semi-occasionally in all grades
of life. It was also known to the ancient Greeks; who
coined for it the word 'nyctalopia'; from 'nux-nuktos,'
meaning ‘night;' and 'ops' signifying ‘sight,' or 'vision.'
The retina is normal under the following conditions
only :- "
And, here, nearly four thousand miles away from
that dusty classroom and nearly ten years later, Barry
Gale came upon the solution of his own mystery, in the
person of a supposedly stone-blind man!
But, almost at once, he roused himself from his
daze of astonishment. He had not come out here to
night to attend to matters of his own selfish concern,
but to aid Jared Drace. And in a flash, he came back
to the actualities of his errand to the gorge.
"Don't kill him!” he commanded Toni. “And
don't let him go. Tie him up, if you have any strong
cord with you. If you haven't, use your belt and his
own braces. Strips of his clothes, too, if you need


288
BLACK GOLD
more bonds for him. And when he's trussed up so
there's no chance of his getting free, come down where
I'm going, if you really want to be of use. There's
work for white men, to-night.”
Turning, he moved back to the cliff; and to the view
from which he had been absent for less than a minute
in all. Yet, in his absence, he saw Jared Drace had
shifted his position.
Still menacing the grouped guards with his leveled
rifle,—still berating them fiercely in his high old voice,
-Drace had backed closer to the vault. Now, he stood
just outside its open doorway, guarding the heap of
treasure at his feet and the far greater hoard of gold
in the vault behind him.
There he took his stand; resolute, wrathful, fearless;
his rifle menacing the shuffling men who looked long-
ingly at their stacked rifles and sheepishly at one an-
other and then in furtive threat at the single fragile
figure which was holding them all at bay.
So intent were they on their own situation that
neither the guards nor Drace himself noted Barry
Gale's advent on the scene as with cautious speed he
began to clamber down the rough and steep-sloping lip
of the rock above their heads.
The light gave Barry ample opportunity to choose
his foothold in the various juts and clefts in the sur-
face of the cliff. And he descended rapidly; seldom
taking his eyes from the gallant old man just beneath
him.
Thus it was, when he was still some ten or twelve
feet above Drace, he saw two long arms shoot forth


BLACK GOLD
289
from the doorway of the vault; as Jared took a final
backward step toward the aperture.
Wolfe Naylor, at work within the vault, had wit-
nessed his employer's dramatic arrival on the scene.
Having no pistol with him and a dash for the rifles be-
ing too needlessly perilous in face of Drace's own lev-
eled weapon, the secretary had remained where he was;
and had motioned his half-dozen fellow workers, (who
were hoisting bags of ingots to the surface, from the
vault's interior), to do the same.
Out of sight from the men who had passed from
the vault with their loads and whom Drace's coming
had surprised in the open, Naylor had no resource but
to bide his time. And, in the meanwhile the trapped
handful of guards facing Jared's rifle were masterless
and uncertain; awaiting some sign or order from their
new chief.
It was the luckless Drace himself who gave the sec-
retary his chance; when he turned his back on the open
vault and moved against the doorway to protect it from
any possible rush by the guards. Then it was that
Barry Gale saw Naylor's arms dart forth like twin
snakes, toward the unsuspecting old man.
The outside group of guards saw, too, and their
sullenness merged into broad grins. As Drace, sus-
pecting, too late, half turned to see what they were
grinning at, Naylor's left arm passed around his throat,
from behind; and his left arm pinioned the rifle to the
old financier's breast.
In the relentless grip of a man half his age and
double his strength, Drace struggled with futile vehe-


BLACK GOLD
291
parties of guards. His wrathful old face was not love-
ly to look upon in its paroxysm of indignant hate.
And, as the rifle-barrel swayed in their direction, the
several heads which had appeared in the vault doorway
popped back again with much speed; while the knot of
guards outside halted shamblingly and looked first at
their fallen leader and then at their own rifles stacked
just out of reach.
Barry knew this instant of surprise and indecision
could not endure. And already the stunned Naylor was
beginning to stir. After a single lightning swift look,
Drace had seemed to grasp the import of Gale's own
presence there; for he did not so much as glance at him
again; but reserved his full attention for the two
divided groups of guards. Barry's mind, in the instant
of grace, worked quickly.
“How many people know the combination of that
vault, sir?” he called, as he bent over the slowly re-
viving secretary.
“Naylor and I," snapped Drace, without turning.
“No one else.”
Before the curt reply was finished, Barry Gale was
swinging Naylor up in his arms. With one stupendous
heave of all his muscles, he whirled his inert burden
half way around and flung it bodily in through the
gaping doorway of the vault.
The secretary's flying form collided with one or two
of the more venturesome of the vault's occupants, who
were edging forward from within. Almost before his
arms were freed of the man he had hurled, Gale was


BLACK GOLD
293
take a hand in the game for us. Toni!” he went on,
in French, as the Basco gathered himself up, bruised
and shaken from the swift descent, “take one of those
rifles and help keep those men covered.”.
The Basco, with a smile of pure happiness, obeyed.
And in almost the same instant a hard ridden horse
came into the circle of light and drew to a nervous halt.
It was Señora. Astride her, sat Maida Drace, pistol
in hand.
"I—I lost the way!” panted Maida, staring in amaze
at the scene before her. "Is ?"
“Everything is all right!" Barry assured her. “The
melodrama villains have proved to be a very cheap set
of villains indeed. They~ "
He was interrupted by the two rearmost guards who,
under shelter of their comrades' forms, turned and
bolted into the darkness of the forest behind them. A
third fled noisily up the insecure footing of the basalt
ridge, whence Barry had tumbled, two days earlier, at.
Wolfe Naylor's shot.
The rest, at sight of these examples, risked the three
rifles by scattering in panic flight into the dark.
"Let them go! yelled Barry, as Drace sent an ill-
aimed bullet after them. "They're as harmless as
sheep, now. Their fangs are drawn. They— ".
He got no further. The earth swayed and jarred,
cutting off his speech. The sulky glow from Lassen
swirled up into a column of living flame that shot high
in the heavens, making everything as bright as sunlit
day.
With a scream of terror Señora bolted. She fled


BLACK GOLD
295
a mile deep and buried under innumerable tons of rock
and dirt, past all possible chance of recovery,—lay
some twenty million dollars' worth of gold bars; to-
gether with the wreck of a steel-and-concrete vault and
the bodies of Wolfe Naylor and his trapped confeder-
ates.
Dick O’Rell could never forgive himself for having
been lured into lounging over to Romeyn's for a chat,
late that afternoon, and for permitting himself to stay
so long. But he was a little relieved when, three days
later, Barry brought him an odd document to read.
The paper was a copy of the confession just obtained
at Red Bluff jail from the police-sweated Sludge.
Dick devoured the first part of it;—the part wherein
the valet told how he had been bribed into becoming
an accomplice of Wolfe Naylor and of acting as a spy
on his employer; and of his following Gale home, that
first night, at Naylor's order, in an attempt to shoot
him if he could do so with any strong chance of safety;
and of his retrieving for Naylor the pistol he saw
Barry fling into the field.
O’Rell went on with equal speed to scan the tale of
the watchful Sludge's hiding in the dark pasture copse
as Gale and Maida rode past; and of Zit's attempt to
unearth him there. Also of the second night's vigil at
the ranch house and the trail of cayenne to check any
possible pursuit of the rancher's dog.
Dick read more slowly, and with a puzzled frown, the
account of the changing from brogans into list slippers
to deaden sound and confuse the trail. And when he








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