McMurtrie scoffed openly at that, taking his pipe from his mouth to say: "That's the one thing you don't know. You'll chew on it a while and go to Denver; and in a day or so your men will get orders to go on. I've seen you downed before. Why don't you go back East and marry a rich girl? That's the way to develop a mine." It was a random shot, but it went so near the mark that Bartrow winced, and was thankful that the flaring miner's lamp was not an arc-light. And his rejoinder ignored the matrimonial suggestion. "You're off wrong this time, Mac. I wish you didn't have to be. But it's no use. I'm in debt till I can't see out over the top of it, and I couldn't raise another thousand on the Myriad if I should try,--that is, not in Colorado. If I go to Denver it'll be to turn over my collateral and let everybody down as easy as I can." "Then don't go yet a while." Bartrow took the lamp and led the way out of the tunnel. "I did mean to stand it off to the last minute," he said, when they were once more under the stars, "but I don't know as it's worth while now. Will you come up to the shack and smoke a few lines? No? Then wait till I get my coat and I'll walk down to camp with you. I want to do a little wiring before I turn in." They parted at the railway station above the camp at the foot of Bonanza Mountain, and Bartrow went in to send his message. In the hour of defeat he yearned, manlike, for sympathy; and it was to Connie that his cry went out. Notwithstanding the earnestness of it, the appeal was consistently characteristic in its wording. "I'm hunting sympathy. Can you give me a lonesome hour or two if I come down? Answer while I wait." He asked the night operator to rush it, and sat down with his feet on the window-sill to smoke out the interval. A half-hour later, when the operator was jogging Denver for a reply to his "rush," the din of an affray floated up to the open window from the camp in the gulch. The operator came to the window and looked down upon the twinkling lights of the town. "That's the blacksmith again," he said. "He's been on a steady bat for two weeks, and the camp isn't big enough to hold him." "He'll kill himself, if he don't mind," Bartrow prophesied. "He's raw yet, and hasn't found out that a man can't stand the drink up here that he could in the valley." "No. Doc said he had a touch of the jimmies last night. He yelled for his daughter till they heard him up at the shaft-house of the Bonanza. McMurtrie said"--But what the engineer's commentary had been was lost to Bartrow, since the clicking sounder was snipping out the reply to the "rush" message. The operator wrote it out and handed it to Bartrow. The answer was as characteristic as the appeal. "Two of the three of us go to Boulder to-morrow to return by the late train. The other one is most sympathetic. Come. "CONNIE." CHAPTER XXVI