"Mr. Jeffard, I'd like to ask a question. You needn't answer it if you don't want to. Do you know who drove this tunnel?" "I do." "Was it the man who raced you from Leadville to Aspen, and who shot you when you tried to bluff him by making him believe that you had already located the claim in your own name?" "It was." "Then, to put it plainly, you are the aggressor, after all. You have really jumped your partner's claim." The promoter stopped and faced his man, and the skulker at the tunnel's mouth crept nearer, as a listener who may not miss a word. "That is what men will say, I suppose; and I shall not contradict them. He has forfeited his right." Jeffard said it with eyes downcast, but there was no incertitude in the words. "Forfeited his right? How? By shooting at you in a very natural fit of frenzied rage? I can't believe that you realize the enormity of this thing, Mr. Jeffard. You are new to the West. It is true that the law can't touch you, but public opinion, the sentiment of a mining region, will brand you as the basest of thieves." "That is the public's privilege. I shall not attempt to defend myself--to you, or to any one. The consequences are mine to suffer or to ignore." "You can't ignore them. Your best friends will turn upon you, and mining-camp justice will not only acquit the man who tried to kill you--it will fight for him and condemn you." "But yesterday you said it would have given me the benefit of the doubt and lynched him. I can fight my own battle." "Yes, I did say so; and, lacking your own evidence against yourself, it will condemn him yet. Had you thought of that?" "Mr. Denby, I have answered your questions because you had a right to ask them. To the public I shall neither deny nor affirm." "Then you'll have the choice of posing as a scoundrel on the one hand, or of consenting to the death or imprisonment of a measurably innocent man on the other. I don't envy you." "It is my own affair, as you were good enough to say yesterday. Do you wish to withdraw your proposal?" Denby took time to think about it, pacing out his decision what time the moon was beginning to silver the western snow-caps. "No; as I have made it and you have accepted it, the proposal is merely a matter of service to be rendered and paid for; I furnish the capital to work the mine for a year for a certain portion of the output. But if you had taken me up on the original proposition, I should beg to be excused. Under the circumstances, I shouldn't care to be a joint owner with you." "You couldn't be," said Jeffard briefly; "you, nor any one else." "Well, we are agreed as to that. Shall we go now? Donald is waiting, and the moon will be up by the time we strike the trail." "One moment; I have left something in the tunnel." Jeffard turned back toward the timbered archway, and the promoter went with him. In the act a shadowy figure darted into the mouth of gloom and was seen by Denby. "What was that?" "I didn't see anything."