There was small hope now of changing the widow and her "orphan" but if he could not convert them he could show them. As sure as he knew anything he was convinced that Colonel Huff had simply fled from his wife's nagging tongue and, when he got the time, Wiley intended to hire a pack-train and set out across Death Valley to find him. Virginia came and went, but always she avoided him scrupulously. Not once since she had returned from Vegas had she met his questioning eyes; and to all his advances she turned a deaf ear, if the statements of Charley could be trusted. The carefully thought out scheme of getting back the Huff stock and then forming an alliance against Blount had died before it was born; or it remained at best in suspended animation, pending Death Valley Charley's return. He had gone off with his burros but the longer Wiley waited on him the more he saw that Charley was a broken reed. No, the trimming of Blount, if it was done at all, would have to be done by him--and all he needed was time. Two months and a little more lay between him and the day of reckoning--the twentieth day of May. In that short time he must meet heavy obligations, pay off his notes, buy Blount's stock and purchase the mine; and if anything should happen--if the hoist should break down, the mill blow up, the market for tungsten fail--well, he could kiss the Paymaster good-by. The market and other influences were on the knees of the gods, but Wiley decided that there should be no more accidents. That was something preventable and no more love-sick engineers were going to use his gearings for a clothes mangle. He engaged two watchmen who were mechanics as well and then he kept watch over his watchmen. Neither by day nor by night did he go down the hill for more than a few minutes at a time and on dark, stormy nights he wandered about like a specter watching the shadows for Stiff Neck George. He was out there somewhere, Wiley knew it as instinctively as he knew that Virginia hated him, and yet he never appeared. He never made threats nor showed himself in the open but, somewhere, he was out there in the darkness; and sooner or later he would strike. The days dragged on slowly, with cold, March winds and sandstorms boiling in over Shadow Mountain; and then driving rain followed by bright, sunny weather and struggling flowers in the swales. It was spring, in a way, but not the spring of yester-year, with its songs and laughter and high hopes. Wiley felt the old call to be up and away, but his racer remained in its shed. He paced about restlessly, waiting for something to happen, observing the slightest signs--and then he found her tracks in the dust. Virginia had come up the trail in the night and had gone down past the mill. He knew her tracks well and, among the broad brogans of the miners, they stood out like the footprints of a fairy. Wiley's heart leapt up in his breast--and then it stood still. Had she come as an enemy or a friend?