There wasn't any. It was all me! I--I--SALTED THAT PAN!""Salted it!" echoed Fleming, in amazement.
"Yes, 'salted it,'" she faltered; "that's what dad says they call it--what those wicked sons of Mammon do to their claims to sell them. I--put gold in the pan myself; it wasn't there before.""But why?" gasped Fleming.
She stopped. Then suddenly the fountains in the deep of her blue eyes were broken up; she burst into a sob, and buried her head in her hands, and her hands on his shoulder. "Because--because"--she sobbed against him--"I WANTED YOU to come back!"He folded her in his arms. He kissed her lovingly, forgivingly, gratefully, tearfully, smilingly--and paused; then he kissed her sympathetically, understandingly, apologetically, explanatorily, in lieu of other conversation. Then, becoming coherent, he asked,--"But WHERE did you get the gold?"
"Oh," she said between fitful and despairing sobs, "somewhere!--Idon't know--out of the old Run--long ago--when I was little! Ididn't never dare say anything to dad--he'd have been crazy mad at his own daughter diggin'--and I never cared nor thought a single bit about it until I saw you.""And you have never been there since?"
"Never."
"Nor anybody else?"
"No."
Suddenly she threw back her head; her chip hat fell back from her face, rosy with a dawning inspiration! "Oh, say, Jack!--you don't think that--after all this time--there might"-- She did not finish the sentence, but, grasping his hand, cried, "Come!"She caught up the pan, he seized the shovel and pick, and they raced like boy and girl down the hill. When within a few hundred feet of the house she turned at right angles into the clearing, and saying, "Don't be skeered; dad's away," ran boldly on, still holding his hand, along the little valley. At its farther extremity they came to the "Run," a half-dried watercourse whose rocky sides were marked by the erosion of winter torrents. It was apparently as wild and secluded as the forest spring. "Nobody ever came here," said the girl hurriedly, "after dad sunk the well at the house."One or two pools still remained in the Run from the last season's flow, water enough to wash out several pans of dirt.
Selecting a spot where the white quartz was visible, Fleming attacked the bank with the pick. After one or two blows it began to yield and crumble away at his feet. He washed out a panful perfunctorily, more intent on the girl than his work; she, eager, alert, and breathless, had changed places with him, and become the anxious prospector! But the result was the same. He threw away the pan with a laugh, to take her little hand! But she whispered, "Try again."He attacked the bank once more with such energy that a great part of it caved and fell, filling the pan and even burying the shovel in the debris. He unearthed the latter while Tinka was struggling to get out the pan.
"The mean thing is stuck and won't move," she said pettishly. "Ithink it's broken now, too, just like ours."
Fleming came laughingly forward, and, putting one arm around the girl's waist, attempted to assist her with the other. The pan was immovable, and, indeed, seemed to be broken and bent. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and began hurriedly to brush away the dirt and throw the soil out of the pan.
In another moment he had revealed a fragment of decomposed quartz, like discolored honeycombed cheese, half filling the pan. But on its side, where the pick had struck it glancingly, there was a yellow streak like a ray of sunshine! And as he strove to lift it he felt in that unmistakable omnipotency of weight that it was seamed and celled with gold.
The news of Mr. Fleming's engagement, two weeks later, to the daughter of the recluse religious hunter who had made a big strike at Lone Run, excited some skeptical discussion, even among the honest congratulations of his partners.
"That's a mighty queer story how Jack got that girl sweet on him just by borrowin' a prospectin' pan of her," said Faulkner, between the whiffs of his pipe under the trees. "You and me might have borrowed a hundred prospectin' pans and never got even a drink thrown in. Then to think of that old preachin' coon-hunter hevin' to give in and pass his strike over to his daughter's feller, jest because he had scruples about gold diggin' himself. He'd hev booted you and me outer his ranch first.""Lord, ye ain't takin' no stock in that hogwash," responded the other. "Why, everybody knows old man Jallinger pretended to be sick o' miners and minin' camps, and couldn't bear to hev 'em near him, only jest because he himself was all the while secretly prospectin' the whole lode and didn't want no interlopers. It was only when Fleming nippled in by gettin' hold o' the girl that Jallinger knew the secret was out, and that's the way he bought him off. Why, Jack wasn't no miner--never was--ye could see that. HEnever struck anything. The only treasure he found in the woods was Tinka Jallinger!"
