Far down the road an ore train clattered along on the way to the Sampler,--that great middleman institution which is a part of every mining camp, and which, like the creamery station at the cross roads, receives the products of the mines, assays them by its technically correct system of four samples and four assayers to every shipment, and buys them, with its allowances for freight, smelting charges and the innumerable expenditures which must be made before money can become money in reality.

Fairchild sang louder than ever, a wordless tune, an old tune, engendered in his brain upon a paradoxically happy and unhappy night,--that of the dance when he had held Anita Richmond in his arms, and she had laughed up at him as, by her companionship, she had paid the debt of the Denver road.

Fairchild had almost forgotten that.

Now, with memory, his brow puckered, and his song died slowly away.
"What the dickens was she doing ?" he asked himself at last.

"And why should she have wanted so terribly to get away from that sheriff ?" There was no answer.