Gavin, of Broken Arrow

by Francis Lynde

GAVIN, OF BROKEN ARROW

By Francis Lynde

GAVIN was at his key, sending in Train Seventeen's "On Time" report, and through the side-light of the bay-window he saw Faulkner and young Driscoll "square" themselves with Johnson, the conductor of the freight, run the push-car from the shed, couple it to the rear of Seventeen 's caboose, and help the three young women aboard.

He knew what they were going to do, and that it was a highly reckless piece of railroad outlawry; but he persuaded himself that it was no part of his duty to interfere. Young Driscoll was the son of the master mechanic at Castle Cliff, an irrepressible collegian, home for the summer vacation; and Faulkner's father was a Dolomite multi-millionaire, and the owner of the Malachite mine. Gavin's thin lips came together in a straight line, and he went on sending the "O. T." report. Maisie French was one of the three young women, and if it were her good pleasure to take chances with the others, and with the two young men whose sport-loving recklessness was the daily terror of the chaperones at Piute Inn, it was pointedly his part to keep silence.

He was snapping his key upon the final word of the report when the freight pulled out with the push-car in tow. The young women were laughing and shrieking joyously; and Faulkner was standing up and waving his hat to a group of shocked witnesses protesting in dumb show on the veranda of the Inn.

What the young men meant to do they had done before, though not with the young women for accessories. Somewhere on the steep thirty-six-mile grade in Black Rock Canyon they would release the push-car for a flying coast back to the Broken Arrow portal. The risks were plentiful. The stick used for a lever-brake on the wheels might snap; the car might run away and jump the track; and there was always the chance of meeting a "wild" engine, or an unscheduled special train, going in the opposite direction.

The push-car adventurers were ignoring these risks, but Gavin took thought for them as he could. Before going to work on his records, he dropped the station signal board to "Stop for orders," and adjusted the spring of the telegraph relay so that he would be sure to hear anything that might go through over the wires. With the board down, no train would pass Broken Arrow without stopping, and at least one danger—the danger of a collision in mid canyon—would be averted for the young people who were making a coasting course of a live railroad track.

Half an hour later, Gavin began to grow nervous. The push-car had not yet returned; and the general manager's special, with Mr. Brice and a party of the Castle Cliff officials in the private car, was on the line below Broken Arrow, moving eastward. With an ear sharply attuned for the news of the wire, Gavin had been keeping up with the special's movements. There had been quite a long stop at Rockford, the second station west; but now the fast-running train was in motion again, speeding along toward Broken Arrow.

Gavin did not care to be caught with his order-board down when he had no orders to deliver—especially by the general manager's flyer. For aught he knew, Mr. Brice might wish to go through without halting at Broken Arrow. Hunching his big shoulders as if he were fitting them to the unwelcome burden, he threw the freight record aside and sat on the telegraph table, where he could watch the canyon portal and still keep an ear open for the clicking sounder.

Five minutes of suspense ticked themselves off, and at the end of them Pincho, the station next west of Broken Arrow, cut into the stream of wire chatterings to notify the division despatcher that Mr. Brice's special had passed eastward—without stopping.

Gavin heard the Pincho report with quickening heart-beats. The hazard which had been only a possibility was rapidly crystallizing into a certainty. Somewhere in the nearer reaches of the great gorge the push-car with its living freight must be racing westward. A few miles in the opposite direction the special train was flying eastward. Gavin hoped that the narrowing gap would close safely on the side of immunity for the push-car coasters. Explanations to the general manager would be awkward for all concerned.

Five other minutes, surcharged with keen anxiety for the watcher in the bay-window, passed; then, coincidently, Gavin heard the shout of the special's whistle below, and saw the push-car dart like a low-flung projectile out of the canyon portal above. One glance told him that death was reaching for the five rule-breakers. The push-car was entirely beyond control: it would dash past the station at bullet speed and meet the special on the grade below.

The Broken Arrow operator was a gaunt, big-boned young Missourian, and his descriptive epithet, written down in Despatcher Dawson's mental record of his subordinates, was "Slow, and methodically accurate." But at the critical moment he effectually disproved the derogatory half of Dawson's epithet. Broken Arrow's single side-track switched from the main line a hundred feet below the station building and tailed off up the slope of Mount Nebo, pointing to some future extension into a spur to climb to the Malachite mine. For fifty miles in either direction it was the only bit of track reversing the down-hill rush of the Short Line from Elk Pass Tunnel to the mouth of the Sombre. Gavin went through the open bay-window in a clumsy leap, lighted upon his feet, and sprinted for the switch, snapping the lever over a scant second before the catapulting push-car was upon him. Half a minute later the car, checked by the stiff up-grade of the siding, was slowing to its stop, and the general manager's special, with Bloodgood driving the smart eight-wheeler at fifty miles to the hour, came careering around the curve of the down-stream approach.

Gavin reset the switch and chased back to his office in time to lift the order-board to "Clear" before Bloodgood whistled for it. For Miss Maisie's sake, the Missourian hoped that the push-car incident had gone undetected; and when the private car was side-tracked, and Mr. Brice, "Little Millions" and the other officials had gone across the foot-bridge to Piute Inn without asking any discomforting questions, the hope grew large.

But the incident had not gone unremarked. As it chanced, Mr. Brice had been riding in the eight-wheeler's cab, and he had seen the climax of young Driscoll's outlawry, and Gavin's masterful bit of rescue work. Hence, later in the evening, when he was smoking his after-dinner cigar with Superintendent Upham on the piazza of Piute Inn, there was managerial comment and a promise of consequences for the young Missourian.

"Pretty capable young fellow you're wasting here on the Broken Arrow wire office, don't you think?" was Mr. Brice's suggestion when Gavin's exploit was touched upon. "There was nothing but his quick wit and clear-headedness between us and the most horribly needless disaster we've ever had on the Dolomite Short Line. I suppose we can't send young Driscoll and Faulkner to jail, as they deserve, but we might do something for your operator. What does Dawson think of him?"

"Little Millions" smiled. "Dawson calls him 'Old Faithful,' and says he is the safest brass-pounder on the division; never kicks, never falls down, and never tangles a train order."

"What else do you know about him?"

"Two or three things, none of them very illuminating. He is the son of a Missouri farmer, and he was trying to snub his way through a country college when the tuberculosis bacillus served notice on him. He broke for the tall hills, and seems to have successfully outrun the bacillus. That's all I know, except that he is hopelessly in love with Maisie French, the auditor's daughter."

It was the general manager's turn to smile.

"Do you keep tab on all the love affairs of all the bachelors in the operating department, Gebby? How do you manage it?"

"I don't. I'm taking my cue from Mrs. Kate. She has been here at the Inn off and on all summer, and she is my authority for the hopeless Gavin. It seems that Gavin hails from the same Missouri neighborhood as the Frenches, and there were some boy-and-girl sentimentalities between Martin and Miss Maisie back in the coeducational college."

"I see," said the general manager. "And the sentimentalities have stood the transplanting to the tall hills?"

"Only on Gavin's part, it seems," was Upham's amendment. "The girl's memory is apparently not long enough to reach back to Missouri; and the Faulkner millions are helping to make it shorter. Kate is indignant. She doesn't care much for Faulkner, and she is disposed to 'mother' Maisie. She says Gavin's devotion is absolutely idyllic—dates back to the age of chivalry. Maisie tramples on it; snubs him, pitches Faulkner at his head, and rubs the Malachite millions into him good and hard."

"What does her father have to say about all this?" queried the big boss, interesting himself chiefly because Upham was interested.

"French? Oh, he's like most American fathers of girls: thinks he's out of it when it comes to a sentimental crisis. He has probably never heard of Gavin as a potential son-in-law."

"Or of Faulkner?"

"I wouldn't say that. The prospective heir to old Jasper Faulkner's money is too big a fish to go unmarked in our little pool. But I'd put French above being unduly influenced either by Faulkner's money or by Gavin's lack of a millionaire father."

The general manager smoked quietly until the ash on his cigar was a full inch longer before returning to the original contention.

"I believe I'd keep an eye on Gavin for possible futures, if I were you, Gebby," he said, after the pause. "He looks like good, steady stock."

Upham nodded. "I have been considering him for the agency at Oro; only it's a pretty big jump from Broken Arrow, with a tolerably heavy money responsibility. And I don't know anything about his fiduciary record."

It was at this conjuncture that Auditor French, lately arrived from Castle Cliff on the belated Number Three, drew his chair into line with Upham's, lighted his cigar, and said: "Whose fiduciary record?"

It was Upham who enlightened him. "We were talking about Gavin," he explained.

French was silent for a minute or more. When he spoke it was with evident reluctance.

"Were you thinking of promoting him?"

"Yes; to the agency at Oro, perhaps."

Again the auditor fell silent, answering only after the pause had grown ominous.

"I'm sorry to have to chock the wheels," he said in low tones; "especially so since Maisie has just told me of the immense obligation he loaded upon me this afternoon. But duty comes first. Gavin is under suspicion. That is why I am here to-night."

"What is the trouble?" demanded the superintendent quickly.

"It's the old story of the mining-camp shipping station. Malachite ore is running pretty rich, as you know. It is weighed at the mine, and again at the smelter in Dolomite. It checks short; never very much at a time, but always a little."

"You've traced the shortage?" snapped Upham.

"I am afraid I have—to Gavin. The ore comes down from the mine by Goresby's pack-train, and Gavin ships it. He has every opportunity to open the sacks, take a few of the richer specimens from each, and sew them up again."

Upham let slip a forcible word neatly expressing his feelings. "Our Little Millions," his men called him, and though he ruled them with a rod of iron, they loved him for his fiercely aggressive sense of justice.

"French, that man saved your daughter's life a few hours ago," he began wrathfully; but the auditor interrupted.

"I know: that is the personal equation, and I have to ignore it. I've known Gavin all his life; I know his people—good, sound, reliable country folk, of the kind you like to imagine as constituting the body and backbone of the American eighty millions. That's why I can't understand Gavin's motive. Why should he steal?"

Upham and Brice exchanged glances. When a girl loves money, and a man loves the girl, motives are not far to seek.

When Upham replied it was with an air of antagonism born of the fierce sense of justice. "I suppose you'll have to do your do, French; but I don't envy you a little bit. If it were my job to convict the man who had saved my daughter's life, I'd chuck it."

This was on the Inn veranda, at eight o'clock in the evening. Across the river, in the Broken Arrow wire office, the subject of the conference was having troubles of his own.

At seven-thirty, Goodloe, chemist at the Malachite, had come down to take the train for Denver, bringing a bar of bullion smelted in the mine laboratory out of ore pickings too rich to be shipped in gross. This bar he had turned over to Gavin for transshipment to the Dolomite bank, thus cleverly shifting the responsibility to Gavin's shoulders.

Gavin had objected. His safe was a poor one, and the bar must be held over till the next day's train. Goodloe had insisted. No outsider knew of the existence of the privately made ingot; therefore there was no risk. In the end the chemist went his way with a receipt for upward of five thousand dollars' worth of coin-fine gold in his pocket, while Gavin knelt in front of his small safe, wondering how he could stow a nine-inch gold bar in a pigeon-holed space only eight inches deep.

It was at this inauspicious moment that Miss French, strolling over from the Inn with other of the young folk, remembered that she ought to thank Gavin for having saved her life. With Miss Maisie, to think was to act. When she opened the office door, Gavin was sitting on his heels and scowling at the inadequate safe, with the bar of dull yellow metal lying across his thighs.

"Oh-h-h! excuse me!" she fluttered, in mock dismay; "I didn't know you were saying your prayers—truly, I didn't. Or are you only making a votive offering to—whatever is that thing on your knees, Martin? Mercy! I believe it's a—a—" Miss Maisie knew a gold ingot by sight, and her slate-blue eyes grew large.

"Yes; it's bullion," admitted Gavin, putting the ingot on the floor.

Miss French came in and touched the lump of metal with the toe of one small boot.

"Is it really gold, Martin?—gold that can be made into bright, yellow ten-dollar pieces and be spent?"

"Yes," he said, smiling at her conceit, and then growing suddenly grave at the thought that her point of view was Faulkner's: how many half-eagles, eagles and double-eagles could be coined out of a given quantity of bullion. It left a metallic taste in his mouth which became almost acrid when she knelt impulsively beside the ingot, patting it softly.

"You dear, dull, rusty-looking old thing! How many, many good times there are locked up in you!" she said. Then, turning quickly upon Gavin: "Don't you wish it were yours, Martin?"

At first he thought No, and had almost said it. Then he remembered that the lack of this dull, yellow metal stood between him and his heart's desire.

"Yes," he said, baldly; "I guess I do."

He was looking straight in her eyes, and to his surprise they clouded instantly.

"Don't say that, Martin," she pleaded. "I always like to think of you as the one person to whom money—the having it or the lacking it—doesn't make any difference."

He got up stiffly and helped her to rise.

"I used to be that way; but I can't be any more—never, I reckon, Maisie."

"Why can't you? You're not money-mad."

"No. But you set the pace for me: you always have: and you're going to marry money."

"Who told you that, Martin?" she asked quickly, and now she would not look at him.

"Oh, everybody is talking about it. Faulkner's been 'rushing' you all summer, and you've let him. I've only been waiting till you said something, so I could congratulate you. I've got that privilege left, haven't I?"

"Of course: why don't you do it, Martin?"

Her repetition of his home name was getting on his nerves and he put out his hand awkwardly.

"Your happiness is the biggest thing that ever got into my life, Maisie. I'm wishing you all the good things I was once crazy enough to think I might give you. That isn't just the way Faulkner would put it, but I guess you understand."

She turned away still farther, barely touching the hand of congratulation. "You mean that—that you are still loyal?—in spite of everything?"

"Of course, I am," he said, in his slow, Mid-West drawl. "You can't shake me for a friend. And whenever you need me, if the time ever comes, I'll be right there."

"You haven't told me what you are doing with this," she said, changing the subject abruptly and again touching the ingot with the toe of her boot.

He told her, circumstantially. The gold brick was his responsibility. He would pull the wooden pigeon-hole frames from the safe and make room for the ingot, and——

Miss French's companions, who had been parading the platform in the moonlight, were ready to recross the river. They were clustering around the bay-window and calling to the auditor's daughter. Gavin saw Faulkner looking in upon them, and Driscoll with his impish grin. Wherefore he left the explanatory sentence in the air and opened the door for his visitor.

"Good-night," she said, cheerfully, framing her pretty face for a passing instant in the open ticket window. "Don't let that stupid yellow thing keep you awake. Oh, yes: and another thing. I came over to thank you for what you did this afternoon; and—and you talked so ridiculously that I forgot."

When he was alone, Gavin tore the wood-work out of the little safe and locked the heavy ingot into the place made for it. Afterward he trimmed his office lamp, laid an old army pistol that had been his father's on the telegraph table, and sat down to keep a long night vigil.

For an hour or more the wire chatter kept him awake and he listened to it purposefully, with the wakeful determination well emphasized. But later the little safe under the ticket cases drew him irresistibly, and he forgot the clicking sounder and sat staring gloomily at his responsibility with unwinking eyes that grew heavy-lidded from the effort.

By long staring it seemed finally as if the iron safe door were slowly growing transparent. He seemed to see dimly the outlines of the yellow ingot lying behind it. Now the bar itself was becoming luminous, shining with a phosphorescent glow which presently flared up and blinded him.

The tilted pivot-chair righted itself with a crash, and for a quivering second or two he fancied he must still be sleeping. Then realization came with a shock. The office lamp was out; the imagined glow of the gold ingot was really the glare of a dark lantern; and two men with their faces hidden behind black cloth masks were confronting him, one holding the lantern, and the other covering him with a revolver.

"Well," croaked the lantern holder, "we're waiting for you to loosen up and open that safe."

Gavin was one of those who suffer most keenly in anticipation: the arrived reality was always less unnerving. "Meaning that you'll plug me if I don't?" he queried mildly. "Blaze away, if you like. This isn't my night for opening things."

"You'll have five minutes to think better of it," announced the spokesman, and he pulled out his watch and held it so that Gavin could see its face.

For three of the five minutes the silence was stifling. Then the telegraph sounder began to snip eager little notches into the stillness, and Gavin started involuntarily.

"That's my office call," he said. "Will you let me answer it?"

"Not much!" was the sharp rejoinder. "You don't fool us. You open that safe!"

Gavin's heavy jaw came up with a snap, and he said no more. The tapping of the sounder ceased, but it began again almost at once. There was trouble on the line. A westbound freight had overrun Chrysolite, at the upper end of the canyon where it should have side-tracked for a fast eastbound extra carrying a cargo of tea.

Dempsey, the night despatcher, had no means of knowing whether the tea train had or had not passed Broken Arrow; hence his attempt to call Gavin, though Gavin's station was only a "day" office. Now he was wiring Chrysolite to send one of the "pusher" engines down the canyon after the escaped freight.

Gavin gathered the facts from Dempsey's frenzied order to Chrysolite. Also, he was sure that the tea extra could not have passed Broken Arrow without awakening him. His five-minute reprieve had expired when he said:

"There's an extra from the west due here any minute. If it goes by, there'll be a head-ender in the canyon with Number Sixteen. I'll open the safe if you'll let me put a stop signal out for that extra."

Somewhat to his surprise the proposal, or the information upon which it was based, seemed to shock the two desperadoes quite out of character.

"Damn the plunder! Let's get out of here and stop that train!" cried the taller of the pair, speaking for the first time. But though the hands holding the lantern and the watch were shaking, the other was determined,

"He's lying to gain time!" he retorted. "T-take it easy, pardner, and hold your gun on him while he puts out his red light!" Then to Gavin: "Hurry, you duffer!"

Gavin sprang afoot and lighted a red lantern. When he held it up to pick the wick, a single ray of light found its way behind the mask of the man who was guarding him. Gavin saw, set his teeth upon a gasping oath, and a moment later was placing the stop signal for the tea train, with the tall robber still covering him.

Fifteen minutes afterward, the extra, rounding the curve below Broken Arrow, gave two whistle yelps and the brakes went on. Gavin's office was wide open when the crew of the halted train came in with their lanterns, and Gavin was sitting in the dark with his arms doubled on the telegraph table and his face hidden in the crook of an elbow.

"Hello, Missouri? What's the matter with you?" called the conductor, in gruff good-nature. "Wake up and ask Dempsey what he's holding us for."

Gavin sat up, and his eyes were the eyes of a man who has forgotten how to sleep.

"Take the siding," he directed shortly. "Sixteen has run by Chrysolite, and she'll be here in a few minutes. Come in when she passes, and I'll get your orders."

It was quite early the following morning when Upham and French came over from the Inn. The auditor's errand was to charge Gavin with the ore-stealing, and Upham had insisted on being present—in the interests of even-handed justice.

They found Gavin as the tea train crew had found him. only he was a shade more haggard when he looked up and saw who his visitors were. French's sharp eyes were quick to see the open safe with the broken pigeon-holing lying beside it.

"What's wrong, Gavin?" he demanded.

Gavin pointed to the looted safe.

"There was a five-thousand-dollar bar of bullion in there last night: Mr. Goodloe brought it down from the Malachite. It's gone."

The auditor entered and examined the safe.

"That lock was opened on the combination," he said, turning menacingly upon Gavin. "Who opened it?"

"I did," said Gavin; and more than this he would not say for all their persuadings and threatenings.

General Manager Brice, with his party of officials, had intended going east as first section of the morning passenger; but the mysterious robbery of the Broken Arrow station called for immediate investigation and action. Hence there was a conference held in the general manager's room at the Inn shortly after breakfast, with Mr. Brice's secretary relieving Gavin at the station wires, and Gavin himself held in custody in Upham's bedroom.

It was the general manager who finally voiced the almost unanimous conclusion of the conference; this after Gavin had been examined and cross-examined with no better results than those attained by French and Upham.

"You'll have to surrender him to the legal department, Upham," was Mr. Brice's ultimatum, directed at the superintendent, who was still fighting as a minority of one for the man who would not fight for himself. "He has either been scared into betraying his trust, or he is in collusion with the robbers."

"As you say," said Upham; "though I'm still protesting. Gavin doesn't act like a criminal—or a coward. I've just had Dempsey on the wire. Gavin prevented a canyon wreck last night at eleven-forty. Sixteen ran past her meeting point with the tea extra, and Gavin, who was supposed to be abed and asleep, must have heard the wire panic it stirred up. Anyway, he stopped the tea train."

"Have you asked him about that?" queried Arthur, the general freight agent.

"No. But that isn't all," Upham went on. "We've been keeping quiet about this thing; but in spite of that it is known downstairs that there is trouble, and that Gavin is practically under arrest. The women know it; and some of them—one of them in particular—is greatly distressed."

"Which one?" demanded French; and a sober smile played about the general manager's lips when Upham replied curtly:

"We needn't drag the ladies into it by name: though I don't mind saying that Mrs. Upham heads the faction of protest. As guests here they all know Gavin—some of them much better than we do."

"Bring him in again and let's find out about that tea train," suggested Arthur.

This time it was the auditor who asked for delay. "There's another matter which ought to be mentioned," he said. "As you all know, Gavin has been suspected of stealing ore in transit. A telephone this morning from the Malachite tells me that Goresby, the jack freighter, is the thief. Let that weigh for what it is worth."

"It merely moves the suspicion peg up to this mystery of last night," said the general manager. Then, to Upham: "Bring your man in again, and see if he will tell us about the tea train affair."

Gavin came when he was summoned, and dropped heavily into the chair indicated by Mr. Brice. His eyes were heavy with long wakefulness, but his lips were compressed in lines of stubborn determination.

It was Upham who began on him.

"You put out a red light and stopped the tea train last night, Gavin: how did you come to do that?"

Gavin looked around helplessly. "I—I heard Dempsey wiring Chrysolite," he stammered.

"So you were awake at eleven-forty? Had you been asleep before that?"

"Yes."

"But the safe robbers awakened you? If you don't answer me, your silence will be taken as an admission that I am right."

Gavin slid down in his chair and locked his fingers tightly together. But his only answer was a nod. The circle of accusing listeners seemed to be closing in upon and crushing him.

Upham went on rapidly.

"We know that you were up and dressed, that you stopped the extra, that its crew found you lying across your table in the dark. Therefore, the robbery had already been committed. Therefore, also, the robbers were with you when you put out the stop signal. Gavin, you've got to tell us how they came to let you do it. If you don't, it's tantamount to admitting that they were your friends—your accomplices!"

Again the young Missourian looked around helplessly, and the gray pallor of despair crept into his homely face.

"You're—you're too many for me!" he burst out brokenly, and great beads of sweat stood on his forehead. "I told you I opened the safe: I did open it—it was the price I had to pay to get 'em to let me put out the stop signal."

An indrawn breath of relief that was almost a gasp ran around the little circle of inquisitors.

"That's better," said Upham less savagely. "Now, once more, and the agony will be over: Who were the robbers?"

The persecuted one sprang out of his chair, rigid and tense. "I won't tell!" he cried. "I'll never tell! You may let me rot in prison for a thousand years, but I'll never tell that."

"Ah?" said Upham, quietly; "then there is another point gained—you know them. Now it comes down to this, Gavin: are you going to let the company spend a lot of money finding out a thing you can tell us in two words? That's all there is to it. We'll spend ten times the value of that bullion bar, if necessary, and in the end we'll know."

Gavin put his face in his hands and swayed drunkenly as he fell back into the chair. When he looked up there was something like the cunning of madness lurking in his no-color eyes.

"What if I should tell you it's all a fake, Mr. Upham?—that there was nobody else: that I took the bullion, myself?"

"We shouldn't believe you now, Gavin; we should say that for the first time in this questioning you were lying to——"

There was a noise in the corridor, and Upham went to answer a resolute tap at the door. The intruder was his wife, and she spoke as an ambassadress. "We are very sorry to interrupt a business meeting," she began; "but we had to come in the interests of common … Maisie, dear!"

The young woman in the rear of the ambassadress had darted across to Gavin, and was sobbing and crying and explaining all in a breath.

"It was my fault—all my fault, Martin! I told the boys, Harry Driscoll and Fred Faulkner, about the bar of gold, and—and they got into an argument, and made a bet about you—about your courage, and——"

Gavin got up and put his arm around the penitent, and every man in the room stood up in respectful sympathy. Mrs. Upham added the word of enlightenment.

"Those abandoned young scapegraces actually carried out what they were pleased to call their 'joke!'" she said, indignantly. "I don't know how far they meant to go with it, but it seems that an unexpected train came along and addled what few brains they have. They've left the gold bar here with the hotel proprietor, and they've had the decency to run away on the morning train. Now, Martin Gavin, tell me this: what ever possessed you to throw yourself into the breach for those two wretched boys?"

Gavin waited to exchange a whispered sentence with the auditor's daughter before he drew himself up and made the simple and straightforward statement of fact.

"At first I didn't know 'em; I thought they were the real thing. I didn't allow to open the safe, but when I saw a chance to stop a wreck for five thousand dollars, I thought the company 'd back me up in taking it. Then I saw Faulkner's face behind his mask. It was the talk that Miss Maisie was going to marry him. I never thought of the robber business being a joke; and, of course, I wasn't going to make things hard for Miss Maisie. I think a heap too much of her for that."

"Well!—of all things!" gasped the ambassadress; and there was something like a general murmur of applause to chorus her exclamation. In the movement toward the open door which followed, Auditor French worked his way around to the superintendent.

"You were speaking last night of the agency at Oro," he said, half hesitantly. "Perhaps Gavin could hold it down; and since, as a relative, I would be incapacitated, one of the other men from our office could make the transfer and check him up when he needs it. What's that you say? No; I'm not greatly disappointed: in fact, I'm rather glad. Faulkner's well enough in his way—he'll settle down after a bit; but—well, you see, I know the Gavin stock, and——"

For once in his life the mathematically exact auditor was unable to find a period, and Upham helped him out.

"It's all right, French. You tell Miss Maisie that Gavin is to have Oro—when he is married: and the place will be vacant next week. Is that what you want?"

"Y-yes; thank you," said the auditor. "I think it had better not be delayed any longer. "And—and if you wouldn't mention it to Mrs. Upham that I came here to catch Gavin at the ore-stealing?"

"Of course not," laughed Upham.

But it was too good to keep.