A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready | Page 9

been an old tunnel; but it had fallen in, and was
blocked up."
"Well?" said Mrs. Mulrady, contemptuously.
"Well," returned her husband, somewhat disconnectedly, "it kinder
looked as if some feller might have discovered it before."
"And went away, and left it for others! That's likely--ain't it?"
interrupted his wife, with ill-disguised intolerance. "Everybody knows
the hill wasn't worth that for prospectin'; and it was abandoned when
we came here. It's your property and you've paid for it. Are you goin' to
wait to advertise for the owner, Alvin Mulrady, or are you going to
Sacramento at four o'clock to-day?"
Mulrady started. He had never seriously believed in the possibility of a

previous discovery; but his conscientious nature had prompted him to
give it a fair consideration. She was probably right. What he might
have thought had she treated it with equal conscientiousness he did not
consider. "All right," he said simply. "I reckon we'll go at once."
"And when you talk to Lawyer Cole and Jim, keep that silly stuff about
the pick to yourself. There's no use of putting queer ideas into other
people's heads because you happen to have 'em yourself."
When the hurried arrangements were at last completed, and Mr.
Mulrady and Mamie, accompanied by a taciturn and discreet Chinaman,
carrying their scant luggage, were on their way to the high road to meet
the up stage, the father gazed somewhat anxiously and wistfully into
his daughter's face. He had looked forward to those few moments to
enjoy the freshness and naivete of Mamie's youthful delight and
enthusiasm as a relief to his wife's practical, far- sighted realism. There
was a pretty pink suffusion in her delicate cheek, the breathless
happiness of a child in her half-opened little mouth, and a beautiful
absorption in her large gray eyes that augured well for him.
"Well, Mamie, how do we like bein' an heiress? How do we like layin'
over all the gals between this and 'Frisco?"
"Eh?"
She had not heard him. The tender beautiful eyes were engaged in an
anticipatory examination of the remembered shelves in the "Fancy
Emporium" at Sacramento; in reading the admiration of the clerks; in
glancing down a little criticisingly at the broad cowhide brogues that
strode at her side; in looking up the road for the stage-coach; in
regarding the fit of her new gloves--everywhere but in the loving eyes
of the man beside her.
He, however, repeated the question, touched with her charming
preoccupation, and passing his arm around her little waist.
"I like it well enough, pa, you know!" she said, slightly disengaging his
arm, but adding a perfunctory little squeeze to his elbow to soften the

separation. "I always had an idea SOMETHING would happen. I
suppose I'm looking like a fright," she added; "but ma made me hurry
to get away before Don Caesar came."
"And you didn't want to go without seeing him?" he added, archly.
"I didn't want him to see me in this frock," said Mamie, simply. "I
reckon that's why ma made me change," she added, with a slight laugh.
"Well I reckon you're allus good enough for him in any dress," said
Mulrady, watching her attentively; "and more than a match for him
NOW," he added, triumphantly.
"I don't know about that," said Mamie. "He's been rich all the time, and
his father and grandfather before him; while we've been poor and his
tenants."
His face changed; the look of bewilderment, with which he had
followed her words, gave way to one of pain, and then of anger. "Did
he get off such stuff as that?" he asked, quickly.
"No. I'd like to catch him at it," responded Mamie, promptly. "There's
better nor him to be had for the asking now."
They had walked on a few moments in aggrieved silence, and the
Chinaman might have imagined some misfortune had just befallen
them. But Mamie's teeth shone again between her parted lips. "La, pa!
it ain't that! He cares everything for me, and I do for him; and if ma
hadn't got new ideas--" She stopped suddenly.
"What new ideas?" queried her father, anxiously.
"Oh, nothing! I wish, pa, you'd put on your other boots! Everybody can
see these are made for the farrows. And you ain't a market gardener any
more."
"What am I, then?" asked Mulrady, with a half-pleased, half-uneasy
laugh.

"You're a capitalist, I say; but ma says a landed proprietor."
Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on the
Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with
his head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have
already gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title.
Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her
preoccupation, wandered off by