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Show : B13 FRAXIC1S LljllDE Copyright by Charles Scribcer's Cons iveuKfasl was 4 monition that : ouu'thiii y was strong upon me when 1 u- " tlie ladder. Id. the living root.-- T found a mights eober -faced old Haddy putting break fust ou the tnble. "It's just you anil me for !t.!i mornln', Stnnnie," he muttered, la.vlns plates for two; and hhi mild old eyef looked as if they were about to takt a bath. "What !" I exclaimed. "lias Buller ton gone?" "Uh-liuh ; bright and early 'for day, I reckon; leastwise, I didn't hear him when he went." "But where's Jennie? She Isn't sick is she?" He shook his head dolefully. . "No; she she's gone, too." "Not with Bullerton?" I gasped. "It sure does look that-away, Stan-nie. Stan-nie. KI10 left a liT note on the tubl for me. n-tollln' me not to worry none, nnd savin' I needn't look for lier till I saw her ns'in." At first I could hardly believe raj own ears. It was so Incredibly out of keeping with Jennie as I had been Idealizing her. "Are you going after them?" I demanded. de-manded. "Wlint for?" was the despondent query. " "f ain't a morsel o' use, any way you look nt It. Jeanle's a woman wom-an growed, and she don't have to have the old daddy suy she can, 'r she mustn't. Besides, they was probably pltchln' out to catch one o' the early trains there's one each way, east and west nnd them trains 've been gone a couple 0' hours." Daddy had done his best with the breakfast, lint I don't recall any meat of my life that ever came so neat choking me. I told Daddy about the smashing of the machinery, and the proof I had that It had been a piece of sabotage. "lieekon maybe he allowed you'd Qui) out he done it and try a dogfall 'r somethin' with him to pay htm back?" Daddy queried. "I don't know," I confessed. I went on eating In silence, or rather rath-er trying to eat, and turning over the puzzling and bad-tasting questionings in my mind. How could Jeanle go off with Iiullerton, knowiug him to be the scamp he was? And why, If she had been meaning all along to do this tiling, had she blocked his game by telling me that I wasn't to sell him the Cinnabar? Cin-nabar? It was in the midst of these reflections reflec-tions that I chanced to feel In the cuat pocket where I had been carrying the deed turned over to me by Daddy Hiram ; and for the second time that morning I nearly choked. The pocket was empty ! "What's hit you now, son?" Daddy inquired ; seeing my jaw drop, I suppose. sup-pose. "The last thing there was in the box that could fall out aud hit me," I gurgled. gur-gled. "Iiullerton has stolen my deed 10 the Cinnabar 1" "The mischief he has! Plum sure you hain't lost it out o' your pocket?" We made sure, without the loss of a moment ; looking In my loft sleeping-plnce sleeping-plnce and in the mine buildings. The deed was gone, safely enough, and we both agreed that Bullerton had had plenty of chances to steal it. Wearing overclothes while I was working about the machinery, I had often left my coat hanging in the cabin. As a matter mat-ter of fact, I hadn't worn It at all 00 the previous day. "Well, Daddy," said I, after the prolonged pro-longed search had proved futile, "where does this leave me?" Threshing the facts out, we soon found where it left me. Grandfather Jasper, as you may remember, had made no mention of the mine, or, in- deed, of any legacy to me in his will as It had been probated; there was no need of It because he had already deeded the Cinnabar to me, and at the time of his death it was nt longer among ids assets. Moreover, his lawyers law-yers had told Bullerton (according to Bullerton's story told me In the Pullman Pull-man smokeroom) that there was no record of any mining transaction whatever in his papers. Therefore, In the absence of the memorandum which my grandfather had given Cousin Percy and which Percy had doubtless doubt-less carried with him to China there was nothing but the deed to show for my ownership; absolutely nothing. At that, the loss of the deed wouldn't have been fatal If the document had been properly recorded. It hadn't been. And now, with the unrecorded deed gone, there was nothing to prove that I had ever owned the Cinnabar. The loss was total with no Insurance. Insur-ance. Daddy Hiram was shaking his head sorrowfully after we had run this last bunch of straw through the threshing machine. With things looking as bJue as the bluest whetstone that ever clicked upon scythe, we tried to settle upon some line of action. Copuh was the county seal, and the obvious first step would have been for me to go there for a search In the county recouls for evidence of the sale of the mine to my grandfather. Hut the minute I should show myself on the railroad. I'd be nabbed for the theft of that Infernal Inspection car. Daddy offered to go in my pJace, but that alternative didn't appeal to me nt all. I knew perfectly well how helpless he'd be In any such lawyerlike search as would have to be made In the countv recorder's office. r ' & "Climb your horse nd r off the map !" (TO BE CONTINUED.) The best antidote for the vices a boy comes up against nownday is "SHE'S GONE, TOO!" Synopsis. Under his grandfather's grandfa-ther's will, Stanford IJruughton, aoclety Idler, finds his share ot the emtato, valued at Hume thing Uke $440,000, Ilea In a "safe repository," latltudo and longtitude deauribed, and that la all. it may be Identified Identi-fied by the presence nearby of a brown-haired, blue-eyed grl, a- ple-baLd ple-baLd horse, and a dog with a split lace, half black and half white. Stanford at first regards the bequest be-quest as a Joke, but after consideration consider-ation sets out to Ilnd his legacy. On his way to Denver Stanford hears from a fellow traveler, Charles Bullerton, a mining engineer, engi-neer, a Btory having to do with a flooded mine. He has a "hunch" this mine Is the "safe repository" of the will. Bulierton refuses him Information. On the slatlon platform plat-form at Atropla, Just as the train pulls out, Stanford sees what appear ap-pear to be the Identical horse and dog described In his grandfather's will. Impressed, he leaves the train at the next stop, Angels. Unable to secure a conveyance, Broughton eizea a truck-inspection car and scapes, leaving the impression on the town marshal, Beasley, that he la demented. Pursued, he abandons aban-dons the car, which Is wrecked, and escapes on foot. In the darkness dark-ness he Is overtaken by the girl, tl1Pt'nrtwi:se and tne dog' After he in wnrtTWmja pr6ience( she )nvites .-!ww' . illM' tl!" hme' Cinna" ' " mine. Broughton's hosts are Hiram Twombly, caretaker of-the mine, and his daughter Jeanie. Stanford doeB not reveal his identity. iden-tity. Hiram and Stanford go puttering put-tering about the mine. Stanford gets interested In the work and falls In love with Jeanle, who saves his life. Bullerton shows up at the mine. He offers 150,000 for the Cinnabar. Cin-nabar. Stanford says "No." 3 CHAPTER IX. -Continued. "Can you carry It any further?" "Nope ; I reckon I can't. There's too many darned things a-puzzlln' me. One of 'em 13 where In Sam Hill did Charley Iiullerton get all the money that he's flashln' around so pencocky?" "I dou't know where he got It, but he has It, all right; carries It with him," I said sourly. "Yes; but see here, Stannle, son, I'll bet a lice dog worth a hundred dollars dol-lars that it ain't his money." "What makes yeu say that?" "Well, for one thing, because I know Charley Bullerton ; been knowln' him since Adam was a little boy In knee-breeches. knee-breeches. He can't keep any money " Df u.ti own ; Just naturally ain't built that-away." "Gambles It?" I suggested. "Big gambles, yes; stocks and that sort o' truck. No sir-ee ; these yeller-backs yeller-backs he's a-flashin' around ain't hls'n, not by a long chalk, and I'd bet on It. Somebody else Is settln' 'em up; and It that's so, Stannle, there's a reason Tor it." "Sure," I conceded. Then : "Could fou make a long, high, running jump and guess at the reason, Daddy?" -n J'Not., so 's lt'd hold together, I reckon," he replied dubiously. "But there's a few little notions 'at I've picked up from folks that's older In this neck o' woods than I am been here longer. The old Cinnabar never was what you'd caJl a 'bonanza.' Plenty Plen-ty of ore, to be sure, but mostly low grade, 'ceptlng them rich little pockets now and then." "Those rich pockets," I put In. "A Jtrlke of one of them would be about the right time to sell, wouldn't It?" He nodded. "You're shoutln', now. I reckon that'i about how they caught your gran'paw. But Budfly Fuller he's the Tropla telegraph operator and a sort ' half-way nephew o' mine says there's more to It than that 'Long back couple o' years 'r so there was 1 copper strike made In Little Cinnabar gulch, about four mile west o' here, and follerln' It there was a heap o' talk about the railroad runnlu' n branch to It. That there branch, If It tvas built 'r when It's built, for It's goln' to be, some day, to open them copper mines that there branch '11 go right along our bench within a hundred hun-dred yards of the old Cinnabar; so close you could mighty near dump from the ore sheds Into the cars." I begun to see more crookings In the sacrificial road over which Grandfather Grand-father Jasper had been led ; many more and more devious ones. "In that case, even the low-grade Cinnabar would come a hit nearer being be-ing a bonanzajjvahhi't It?" I asked. "She sure wouldNUl,mle- Th;1t long, hard wagon ha'ul"uVTron,a was what was puttln' the cuss 1,1 tlle cost ' nandlin'." "And with the railroad r?M nt the - door, so to speak, it migtu ev?'n pay to recapitalize at three-quarters io a mU" "on aud drive that Ion- draii''age tun neJ we have been figuring on'V "Somethin' like that - yes Can you ee any furder into the'niilNt ,,,ne? r" ny I've got about to the ei .'ll of m-v squlntin'." 1i I refilled my pipe and did'-3" blt of cogitating. Supposing I had ,llecn tlle boss flgurer In the bunch f? that dld Grandfather Jasper the horJ'r to bllk him; as conscienceless ns-1'1"' u,rate' whoever he was, and I " t,,e secret of the conditions as Dad ,ly Just out-ilned out-ilned them, wl:M won, ''' 1 llave 1"n'r' The answer came ' as r"' as -vou please. With a railroad in prospect which would turn a small profit into a big one, I should quite probably have shut the mine down to wait until I could hear the whistle of the locomotive. locomo-tive. Tills conclusion led promptly and logically to another. Supposing, at the moment when I had decided upon the shut-down, some doddering old gentleman gentle-man had come along and offered to buy the mine? Add, as a corollary, the supposition that the water problem was daily growing more insistent, with the ultimate threat of Hood. As an ordinary, or-dinary, garden-variety mining shark, what would I have done? That answer came pat, also. ' I should have taken the old gentleman's money, trusting to the rising flood to make him sick of his bargain in due course of time and thus willing to sell out for anything he could get. "I believe I have It doped out," I told Daddy at the end of the cogitating pause; and then I passed the Inferences Infer-ences along to him. The Immediate effect was to evoke a couple of his quaint substitutes for profanity. "Jeholachlm-to-breakfast 1" he exclaimed ex-claimed ; "I'll be dlng-swlzzled If I dou't believe you've struck the true lead, Stannle, my son! If you have, here's what follers : Charley Bullerton's Buller-ton's here to do the dlckerin' for that same old hlgh-blndln' Cinnnbar outfit that did your gran'paw up. They sold for half a million 'r so and now they're wlllln' to buy back for thirty or forty or fifty thousand. By Jezebel ! 1 just knew that slick-tongued rooster was tryln' to work some skin game!" "Yet he Is going to marry your daughter," I put In grimly. At this the old man turned gloomy-serious gloomy-serious in the batting of an eye, drawing draw-ing his mouth down at the corner aud sucking hard at the pipe which had long since burned out. "That's been a-pinchin' me like a tight boot, Stannle," he admitted. "If you'd ast me afore he come, I'd 'a' told you she hadn't a morsel o' use for that con-dummed blowhard. But Just you look at the way things are stackln' up now I He's snoopln' 'round her .mighty near all the whole time and she hain't never once give me the wink to send him a-kltin', like I'm Itchin' to!" He told me to look. I had been looking look-ing until my eyes ached. The indications indi-cations were nil one way, tons of them ; with only one little Impulsive kiss to put In the other pan of the scale. I didn't tell Daddy about the kiss; but I did te'.l him that Jeanie had told me not to sell the Cinnabar. "So?" he commented, livening up a little. "That brings on more talk. Reckon you can make out to hang onto the old cow's tall for a spell longer?" I took time to consider my answer. "I've been wondering If, all things given their due footing, It were worth while to hang on, Daddy. As matters stand now, Bullerton IS stuck unless I sell out to him. If I should take my foot In my hand and walk out, he'd be left up In the air. But, on the other oth-er hand, there's Jeanle. If she's going go-ing to marry Bullerton, why, that's a horse of nnother color. I'm not enough of a dog-in-the-manger to bite her nose off to spite Bullerton's face." "Cm," was the grunted response. Then, with a side swipe that I wasn't looking for: "Charley Bullerton's been hlntln' 'round that you're tied up with a girl back East. Is that so? or Is It on'y another one o' his frilly lies?" I laughed. "I wish I knew, Daddy; I'd sure tell you If I would anybody. We were really engaged the back-East girl and I ; but I don't think we are now, and I don't think she thinks so. Anyway, she called It all off when we found out or thought we found out that my grandfather hadn't left me anything in his will. She's like Jeanle says she is, you know : she's got to marry money." "Jus' so," he said, with a rather grim glint In the mild blue eyes. "All the same. If you had the old Cinnnbar In slaiv-up workln' order, I reckon you'd have to go back yonder and marry her. wouldn't ye?" "I'd be in honor bound to offer to, anyway." "That don't sound much like you was carln' a whole lot for her." he objected ob-jected gravely. I despaired In advance of ranking him understand the lack of sentiment In the case, or the viewpoint from which any such condition cou'd be considered con-sidered ns a human possibility. He was much too simple-hearted. So I got rid of the Lisette obstacle, or got around it, as best I could. "She has been free for several weeks, now; In nil probability she is wearing-some wearing-some other fellow's ring by this time. Rut about the Cinnabar: assuming that my string of guesses is hitched up to the true state of affairs, what would you advise me to do? Shall I hang on with no prospect that I can see, of getting anywhere on my own hook? Or shall I sell out to Bullerton Bul-lerton nnd thus let your daughter In for a wife's share of a possible fortune?" for-tune?" "Gosh-all-henilock !" he sputtered, "when you line It up tha'-away. 1 reckon 1 ain't the man to tell yo'i what o do!" Then, as upon a s n ml and 'elated thought: an'e ays fur ou not to sell ;" if she said that to me, I'd hanir on till the cows come home. I would so !" I got up and knocked the ashes from iny pipe. "And that, Daddy, Is precisely what I'm going to do," I said; and the saying say-ing of ft ended the conference in the abandoned tunnel of the "Little Jeanie." Jean-ie." CHAPTER X. The Deep-Wells. The next morning I turned out at break of day, before anybody else was up, slipped Into my clothes, straightened straight-ened up my bunk, and dropped through the ladder hntehway to the main-deck. I had told myself that the reason for the daybreak turn-out was a desire to see If the railroad people really had been sufficiently In earnest about the proposed copper mine branch to make a survey for it ; but the true underlying underly-ing push was a biting reluctance to have anything more to do with Bullerton, Buller-ton, or even to sit at table with him. Tiptoeing through the common room, so ns not to wake Daddy Hiram, I broke Into Jennie's kitchen and raided the cupboard for a bite of something to eat. There was plenty of bread, and some cold fried ham, and cutting a couple of generous sandwiches, I hiked out to make my breakfast in the open. The sandwiches disposed of, I began to quarter the bench woodland back and forth, searching for some indications indica-tions of the railroad survey. In due time I found one of the location stakes, and from Its facing and the 'markings on it, got the direction of the proposed line and was able to trace It for some distance along the bench. As Daddy Dad-dy had said, it ran within a few hundred hun-dred yards of the Cinnnbar claim, and a short sidetrack would make his suggestion sug-gestion perfectly feasible ; ' our ore could be shot Into the cars with but a single handling. From tracing the railroad survey, I edged around to take nnother look at the possibilities of the drainage tunnel Daddy and I had figured on. Going over the ground this second time, and with some better knowledge of the difficulties. dif-ficulties. It appeared that we must have ridiculously underestimated the probable prob-able cost. Pacing the distances carefully, care-fully, and guessing at the differences in altitude by the heights of the trees, I saw that it wouldn't be safe to count upon less than a mile of tunneling, and this, In the solid porphyry of Old Cinnabar, and In a situation remote from the nearest base of supplies, would run no, It wouldn't run ; It would fairly gallop Into money. Was this what Bullerton meant to do If he could oust me? That he was utterly ut-terly confident of his nbllity to drain the Cinnabar was evident. But how was it to be done? Would he, or his backers, be willing to spend a quarter quar-ter of a million or more, and the better part of a year's time, driving that mile-long tunnel? The longer I thought about It, the larger the conviction grew that no such expensive expedient was to be resorted to. Bullerton, or his backers, or both, knew some other and far Raided the Cupbo3rd for a Bite of Something to Eat. cheaper and more expeditious way of getting rid of th- water. Sitting on a big rock that had In some former earth convulsion tumbled from the broken cliffs above tlie mine, I gave the mechanical me-chanical fraction jf my brain (it was a small fraction and sadly under-developed) free rein. Two possibilities suggested themselves. them-selves. A siphon, a big pipe, starting at the bottom of the shaft and leading out over the top and down the mountain moun-tain to a point lower than the shaft bottom, would. ifter it was once started, automatically discharge stream of Its own bigness, whatever I at should be. But the cost of over i m Lie of such pipe Was beyond mi' means; and if two six-inch pumps driven night and day had failed to make any impression upon tlie llood, what could be expected of a siphon which, in the nature of things, couldn't !e much bigger than au ordinary street water main? The other possibility was even less hopeful. It was the driving of a short umnel. which Daddy and I might undertake un-dertake without additional help, from the level of the high bench straight in to an intersection with the mine shaft. This, I estimated, might tap the water at a point possibly twenty feet below its present level in the shaft. Its success, suc-cess, as I saw at once, would depend entirely upon the location and volume of tlie underground lake which was supposed to be supplying the flood. If this reservoir were shallow and high In the mountain, the short tunnel might drain it. If it were deep nnd low, nothing would be accomplished. The question was still hanging hopelessly hope-lessly up in the air when I made my way around to tlie mine buildings by the left-hand gulch path, sneaked In and began to shuck myself into Daddy's Dad-dy's extra pair of overalls; Just for what, I hadn't the least Idea ; only I needed to be doing something to keep me from going completely dotty In the guessing contest. By this time, as I knew, they would be getting up from breakfast In tlie cabin across the dump head, which would most likely be Bullerton's cue to come over and ride me some more. When I looked out in sour anticipation, anticipa-tion, here he came, smoking one of his high-priced cigars and swaggering a bit, as he always did in walking. "This is your thirty-thousand-dollar day, Broughton," he tossed at me ns soon as he stepped over the threshold of the shaft house door; but I fancied I could notice that, some way, he didn't seem quite so chipper and careless care-less as he had the day before. "See here," I ripped out; "what's the use? You can't buy this mine at any price! It's not In the market aud It Isn't going to be. Not in a thousand years !" "But see here; what's the use of butting your head against a stone wall? You're stuck, world without end, nnd you know It. This flooded hole In the ground Is of no more use to you than a pair of spectacles to a blind man !" "Perhaps not; ' 'tis a poor thing, but mine own.' I guess I can keep It as a souvenir If I feel like it, can't I?" "Oh, h I !" he gritted, and turning on his heel went away. After he had gone I patted myself on the back a bit for nbf losing my temper and then,. Just to have an excuse ex-cuse for staying away from the cabin and the Bullerton vicinity, I made fires under the boilers and got up steam. In the former pumping spasm Daddy and I had operated only the two big centrifugals, cen-trifugals, Ignoring tlie deep-well pumps designed to lift the water from the lower levels of the mine. Just to try something that we hadn't tried before, I got steam on the deep wellers, and soon found that the machinery, which we hadn't taken down In the general overhauling, needed tinkering before It would be safe to run It. Banking the boiler fires, I went at the job single-handed and managed to wear out the livelong ' day at it. It took me all the afternoon and then some to get the machinery cleaned and tinkered up and reassembled. In pawing over the supplies In the mine storeroom stuff left by the former operators op-erators we had found an acetylene flare torch and a can of carbide and I rigged the torch so that I could go on working after dark. It was along about nine o'clock when I got the deep-wells ready to run and freshened up the fires and turned the stenm on. In curious contrast to the care which had been taken to provide a discharge outlet for the centrifugals, the Cornish pumps had merely an iron trough which ran to a ditch leading down to the bench below the mine buildings. After a few minutes of the clanking and banging, the water began to come. It was horribly smelling stuff, thick and discolored ; evidences sufficient that It was coming from the bottom of the ndne. The two pumps together were lifting ahevt an eight-Inch eight-Inch stream, nnd It oectn ed to me at once that If I could set tlie centrifugals centrifu-gals going at the same time, the mass attack might accomplish what the piece-meal assault couldn't. Throwing In the clutch that drove the big rotaries. I ran up against what Daddy would have called a "circumstance." "circum-stance." There wasn't power enough to drive both sets of pumps coupled in together; at least, not wilh the steam pressure the boiiers were carrying. car-rying. Thinking to get more power by pushing tlie fires a bit harder. I went to the detached boiler room to stoke up. leaving tlie deep wells clanging away in the shafthouse. I hail fired two of the furnaces and was at work-on work-on the third when a series of grinding grind-ing crashes in the machinery sent me Hying to find out what was going wnmc. What was happening what had already al-ready happened was a plenty. As I have said, the great Cornish water-lifters water-lifters were driven through a train of gearing. When I reached the scene, the steam engine was still running smoothly, but the pumps had stopped. The reason didn't have to be looketl for with a microscope. The gear-train was a wreck, with one of the wheels smashed into hits, and half of the cogs stripped from iis mesh-mate, if Hint's what you'd call It. Mechanically I stopped the engine and went to view the remains. The deep-wells were done for there was no question about that ; they'd never run again until a new set of gears should be Installed. That much determined, deter-mined, 1 began to look for the cause of the calamity. Naturally, I supposed that a cracked cog in one of tlie wheels had given way, and with this for a starter, tlie general smash would follow as a matter of course. But a careful and even painful scrutiny of the wreckage failed to reveal the cog with the ancient fracture. Each break was new nnd fresh and clenn ; there wasn't a sign of an old flaw in any one of them. I think I must have knelt there under the gear train for a half-hour or more, hnndling the fragments of Iron and fitting them together. It was like fen 1 1 1 "No, She's Gone, Too." a child's broken-block puzzle, nnd after af-ter a time I was able to lay all the larger bits out upon the floor In their proper relation to one another. It was In the ground-up debris remaining that I found something wdilch suddenly made me see red. Battered Into shape-lessness, shape-lessness, but still clearly recognizable, were the crushed disjecta membra of our twelve-inch monkey-wrench I I tried not to go off the handle In a fit of mad rage. With a sort of forced calm I considered every beam and projecting pro-jecting timber where I might incautiously incau-tiously have left the wrench, and from which It might have jarred off to fall into the gears. There was ' no such chance. I had used the wrench In reassembling re-assembling the machinery', but now that I came to recall all the circumstances, circum-stances, I distinctly remembered having hav-ing put It, together with the other tools, on the little work bench back of the engine. The alternative conclusion con-clusion was, therefore, fairly Inevitable. Inevit-able. While I was firing the furnaces, somebody and doubtless somebody who had been watching for the opportunity oppor-tunity had taken advantage of the moment when my back was turned and had thrown the wrench Into the gears. It was the final straw. There was only one person on the Cinnabar reservation res-ervation who could have any motive for wrecking my machinery; and while I was banking the fires and setting things in order for the night. I charted my course, as the navigators say. The dawn of another day, I told myself, would schedule the ultimate limit. Unless Un-less he should prove to be a good bit quicker with his gun than I was with my fists. Bullerton was due to get the man-handling he seemed to be aching ach-ing for; and beyond that, he'd quit the Cinnabar, If I should have to tie him on his horse and flog tlie beast half-way to Atropia. It was with this most unchristian design seething and. boiling In my brain that 1 finally went over to the cabin, let myself in, and climbed stealthily up the loft ladder to my blankets, and the next thing I knew. It was broad .'ayllght. the sun was shining in at tie Utile window over tlie head of toy bunk, and from the kitchen at tlie rear a Juicy and most appetizing odor of frying bain was wafting itself up "through the cracks in the unchinkeil wnlls of my cubicle. CHAPTL'R XI. An Arctic Bath. It's an old saying thai coming events have a kraek of foreshadowing themselves. them-selves. While I was struggling nt my clothes and reviving that overnight over-night determination to have it nut with Bullerton the minute I should Iny eyes upon him. It struck me all at once that liie house was curiously quiet To be sure. solueUidv cu stirring unri thp |