Nell had displayed at the last some little interest in Dick the Devil. The other girls at the Grub Stake gossiped about it. Then came Mother Tubbs with a bona-fide letter from the girl to dam the flood of gossip. Nell was working as usual in a cabaret. She had left Boss Tolley because she could not stand him any longer. She was bitter about the Grub Stake and its proprietor. And not a word in the letter about Dick Beckworth. It was plain, even to the most suspicious, that Dick had not gone with her after all. These few facts colored Joe Hurley’s thoughts as they rode along the track. What colored Nell’s? When the sprightly talk lapsed between them, the girl’s face fell into unhappy lines. She who had been as blithe as a field lark all her life was showing to Joe Hurley for the first time a most unnatural soberness of spirit. Her eyes, their gaze fixed straight ahead, were filmed with remoteness that his friendly glance could not penetrate. Something had changed Nell Blossom. She was no longer the happy-go-lucky girl she had been heretofore. He wondered if, after all, her affair with Dick Beckworth was serious. They skirted the Overhang, their horses now at a canter. Nell suddenly pulled in her mount at a place where a patch along the brink of the treacherous cap had recently crumbled. “Looks as if there might have been a small slide,” observed Hurley cheerfully. “Was—was anybody hurt?” “Reckon not. Just about where the big slide was years ago. There are always bits dropping down this cliff. I tell ’em there’s bound to be another landslip some time that will play hob with Runaway River and maybe flood out the town again. It’s like living over a volcano.” Nell still looked back at the broken edge of the cliff. “Nobody missing, then? Nobody—er—left town?” He laughed. “Nobody but you and old Steve and Andy McCann. Those old desert rats lit out the same morning you left town. Hold on! I don’t know as you know it; but Dick Beckworth went about that time. He’s gone to Denver, so Tolley says, to deal faro at a big place there.” He could not see the girl’s face. As far as he knew the statement made no impression upon her. They jogged on practically in silence until they came to the point where the wagon-track plunged steeply to the ford of the West Fork, and from which spot the squalid town was first visible. “Ugh!” Nell shuddered and glanced at Joe again. “It is such an ugly place.” “Where’s your civic pride, Nell?” and the other chuckled. “What is there to be proud of?” was her sharp demand. “It’s a money-making town.” “Money!” “Quite a necessary evil, that same money,” he rejoined. “Gold is a good foundation to build a town upon. Canyon Pass has ‘got a future in front of it,’ as the feller said. Business is booming. Bank deposits are increasing. Three families have bought piano-players, and there are at least a dozen talking machines in town—besides the female citizens,” and he laughed again.