The other, as if remembering all that was represented in the scene below, did not answer. He was thinking of the days when his father and he had been friendly, and of how that restless, grasping, conquering dreamer had built many hopes, even as he squandered many dollars, on the Croix d'Or. It was to produce millions. It was to be one of the greatest gold mines in the world. All that it required was more development. Now, it was to have a huge mill to handle vast quantities of low-grade ore; then all it needed was cheaper power, so it must have electric equipment. Again the milling results were not good, and what it demanded was the cyanide process. And so it had been, for years that he could still remember, and always it led his father on and on, deferring or promising hope, to come, at last, to this! A great, idle plant with some of its buildings falling into decay, its roadways obliterated by the brush growth that was creeping back through the clearings as Nature reconquered her own, and its huge waste dumps losing their ugliness under the green moss. It seemed useless to think of anything more than an occasional pay chute. Yet, as he thought of it, hope revived; for there had been pay chutes of marvelous wealth. Why, men still talked of the Bonanza Chute that yielded eighty thousand dollars in four days' blasting before it worked out! Maybe there were others, but that was what his father and Sloan had always expected, and never found! His meditations were cut short by a shout from below. A man appeared, small in the distance, on the flat, or "yard" of what seemed to be the blacksmith shop. "Wonder who that can be?" speculated Bill, drawing his hat rim farther over his eyes. "I don't know," answered Townsend, puzzled. "I never heard of their having any watchmen here. But we'll soon find out." They started down the hillside at a faster pace, the tired animals surmising, with their curiously acute instinct, that this must be the end of the journey and hastening to have it over with. As they broke through a screen of brush and came out to the edge of what had been a clearing back of a huge log bunk-house, the man who had shouted came rapidly forward to meet them. There was a certain shiftless, sullen, yet authoritative air about him as he spoke. "What do you fellers want here?" he asked. "I s'pose you know that no one's allowed on the Cross ground, don't you?" "We didn't know that," replied Townsend, inclined to be pacific, "but I fancy, we are different from almost any one else that would come. We represent the owners." "Can't help that," came the blustering answer. "You'll have to hit the trail. I don't take orders from no one but Presby." A shade of annoyance was depicted on Townsend's face as he continued to ignore the watchman's arrogance, and asked: "And please tell us, who is Presby?" "Presby? Who's Presby? What are you handin' me? You don't know Presby?"