The fellow gave a shrug of his shoulders, an evil grin, and turned back up the road to vanish in what had evidently been the superintendent's cabin, and noisily began to whistle as he gathered his stuff together. The partners halted before the door, and Dick looked inside. "I suppose you have the keys for everything, haven't you?" he called. The man impudently tossed a bundle at him without a word. Apparently his belongings were but few, which led the newcomers to believe that he had taken his meals at the Rattler, and perhaps slept there on many nights. They watched him as he rolled his blankets, and prepared to start down the trail. "The rest of that plunder in there, the pots and the lamp, belong to the mine," he said. And then, without other words, turned away. "That may be the last of him, and maybe it won't!" growled Bill, as he began throwing the hitches off the tired burros that stood panting outside the door. "Anyway, it's the fag end of him to-night." They were amazed at the lavish expenditure of money that had been made in the superintendent's quarters. There were a porcelain bathtub brought up into the heart of the wilderness, a mahogany desk whose edges had been burned by careless smokers, and a safe whose door swung open, exposing a litter of papers, mine drawings, and plans. The four rooms evidently included office and living quarters, and they betokened a reckless financial outlay for the purpose. "Poor Dad!" said Dick, looking around him. "No wonder the Cross lost money if this is a sample of the way the management spent it." He stepped outside to where the canyon was beginning to sink into the dusk. The early moon, still behind the silhouette of the eastern fringe of peaks and forests, lighted up the yellow cross mark high above, and for some reason, in the stillness of the evening, he accepted it as a sign of promise. CHAPTER IV THE BLACK DEATH It took seven days of exploration to reveal the condition of the Cross of Gold, and each night the task appeared more hopeless. The steel pipe line, leading down for three miles of sinuous, black length, from a reservoir high up in the hills, had been broken here and there maliciously by some one who had traversed its length and with a heavy pick driven holes into it that inflicted thousands of dollars of expense. The Pelton wheels in the power house, neglected, were rusted in their bearings, and without them and the pipe line there could be no electric power on which the mill depended. The mill had been stripped of all smaller stuff, and its dynamos had been chipped with an ax until the copper windings showed frayed and useless. The shoes of the huge stamps were worn down to a thin, uneven rim, battering on broken surfaces. The Venners rattled on their foundations, and the plates had been scarred as if by a chisel in the hands of a maniac.