I was really furious now. I could see he didn’t believe I was a married woman. He took me for just a common girl of the streets. Turning around, I stamped my foot and started to yell at him when the other one said: “No offense, ma’am. Slim, here, hasn’t seen a girl like you in so long he’s forgotten his manners.” They wheeled their horse and started off down toward Main Street, leaving me still gasping on the walk. I had been insulted. I wanted to cry, to cry for the shame of it! But as their trim backs receded in the swift-wheeling gig, I told myself this was what I had come for—adventure. And here it was. I ended by trudging on up hill with a smile flickering at the corners of my mouth. But the smile was not to remain long. When Harvey returned that night he was dirty and tired and discouraged. He had taken a lot of samples from the sump of the shaft to the assay office. But a man he had gone to for advice in Nevadaville hadn’t thought the samples worth bothering to pay for assaying. “You might keep on sinking your shaft and strike a better vein. But these quartz lodes you got down there now are too low grade to work,” had been his verdict. What to do now? My heart flew into my throat. We had had only the money that Harvey’s father had left us to get started on. In a few more weeks with running a crew at the mine, our capital would be used up and if the ore were no good, we would have nothing to live on. But if we did try to keep on we might strike high-grade ten feet beyond—just like so many bonanza kings. That’s what I wanted to do and suggested we borrow money at the bank. “I’ll help you, Harvey, I’m strong.” Our little house on Spring Street was not very well tended because for six months, besides being wife and housekeeper, I donned miner’s clothes to run the horse-pulled hoist in our mine. We each worked a crew on separate shafts. For several months we had rich ore, then the vein went “in cap.” We kept on sinking, but all to no avail. We still didn’t strike high-grade ore and the shaft caved from faulty timbering. “I guess I better get a job in one of the big mines,” Harvey suggested. Me, the wife of a common miner—working for a few dollars a day! The idea struck horror to my soul. “Certainly not!” I replied. “I won’t have it.” “Well, what else is there to do? We can’t go home. Father would be mad and Mother won’t have you in the house.” “Your mother—with her airs. I’m just as good as she is any day!” “I’ll thank you not to insult my mother.” Words tumbled on words like blows. Harvey and I were in the midst of our first serious quarrel. The higher our tempers rose, the more bitter our choice of barbs to hurt each other. I hated the idea of having married a man who would give up. I thought I had married a clever man. Instead, I had married a weakling. I said all this and more.