"Twin Springs," the place was called now--Twin Spring Mines. Already men
were at work on the new lode, and doing placer digging for the free gold
in the soil. Wooden rails were laid to the edge of the stream, and over it
the small, rude car was pushed with the new ore down to a raft on which a
test load had been drifted to the immense crusher at the works on Lake
Kootenai. And the test had resulted so favorably that the new strike at
Twin Springs was considered by far the richest one of the year.
Through all the turbulence that swept up the little stream to their camp,
two of the discovering party were housed, sick and silent, in the little
double cabin. The doctor could see no reason why 'Tana was so slow in her
recovery; he had expected so much more of her--that she would be carried
into health again by the very force of her ambition, and her eager delight
in the prospects which her newly acquired wealth was opening up to her.
But puzzling to relate, she showed no eagerness at all about it. Her
ambitions, if she had any, were asleep, and she scarcely asked a question
concerning all the changes of life and people around her. Listless she lay
from one day to another, accepting the attention of people indifferently.
Max would read to her a good deal, and several times she asked to be
carried into the cabin of Harris, where she would sit for hours talking to
him, sometimes in a low voice and then again sitting close beside him in
long silences, which, strangely enough, seemed more of companionship to
her than the presence of people who laughed and talked. They wearied her
at times. When she was able to walk out, she liked to go alone; even Max
she had sent back when he followed her.
But she never went far. Sometimes she would sit for an hour by the stream,
watching the water slip past the pebbles and the grasses, and on to its
turbulent journey toward a far-off rest in the Pacific. And again, she
would watch some strange miner dig and wash the soil in his search for the
precious "yellow." But her walks were ever within the limits of the busy
diggings; all her old fondness for the wild places seemed sleeping--like
her ambitions.
"She needs change now. Get her away from here," advised the doctor, who no
longer felt that she needed medicines, but who could not, with all his
skill, build her up again into the daring, saucy 'Tana, who had won the
game of cards from the captain that night at the select party at Sinna
Ferry.
But when Overton, after much hesitation, broached the subject of her going
away, she did look at him with a touch of the old defiance in her face,
and after a bit said:
"I guess the camp will have to be big enough for you and me, too, a few
days longer. I haven't made up my mind as to when I want to go."
"But the summer will not last long, now. You must commence to think of
where you want to go; for when the cold weather comes, 'Tana, you can't
remain here."
"I can if I want to," she answered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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