The Three Partners | Page 2

to marry and settle down with on the strength of his luck. And I'd
like to know what Kitty Carter, when she's Mrs. Barker, would say to
her husband being signaled for from Asia or Africa. I don't seem to see
her tumbling to any password. And when he and she go into a new
partnership, I reckon she'll let the old one slide."
"That's just where you're wrong!" said Barker, with quickly rising color.
"She's the sweetest girl in the world, and she'd be sure to understand
our feelings. Why, she thinks everything of you two; she was just eager
for you to get this claim, which has put us where we are, when I held
back, and if it hadn't been for her, by Jove! we wouldn't have had it."
"That was only because she cared for YOU," returned Stacy, with a
half-yawn; "and now that you've got YOUR share she isn't going to
take a breathless interest in US. And, by the way, I'd rather YOU'D
remind us that we owe our luck to her than that SHE should ever
remind YOU of it."
"What do you mean?" said Barker quickly. But Demorest here rose
lazily, and, throwing a gigantic shadow on the wall, stood between the
two with his back to the fire. "He means," he said slowly, "that you're
talking rot, and so is he. However, as yours comes from the heart and
his from the head, I prefer yours. But you're both making me tired. Let's
have a fresh deal."
Nobody ever dreamed of contradicting Demorest. Nevertheless, Barker

persisted eagerly: "But isn't it better for us to look at this cheerfully and
happily all round? There's nothing criminal in our having made a strike!
It seems to me, boys, that of all ways of making money it's the squarest
and most level; nobody is the poorer for it; our luck brings no
misfortune to others. The gold was put there ages ago for anybody to
find; we found it. It hasn't been tarnished by man's touch before. I don't
know how it strikes you, boys, but it seems to me that of all gifts that
are going it is the straightest. For whether we deserve it or not, it comes
to us first-hand--from God!"
The two men glanced quickly at the speaker, whose face flushed and
then smiled embarrassedly as if ashamed of the enthusiasm into which
he had been betrayed. But Demorest did not smile, and Stacy's eyes
shone in the firelight as he said languidly, "I never heard that
prospecting was a religious occupation before. But I shouldn't wonder
if you're right, Barker boy. So let's liquor up."
Nevertheless he did not move, nor did the others. The fire leaped higher,
bringing out the rude rafters and sternly economic details of the rough
cabin, and making the occupants in their seats before the fire look
gigantic by contrast.
"Who shut the door?" said Demorest after a pause.
"I did," said Barker. "I reckoned it was getting cold."
"Better open it again, now that the fire's blazing. It will light the way if
any of the men from below want to drop in this evening."
Stacy stared at his companion. "I thought that it was understood that we
were giving them that dinner at Boomville tomorrow night, so that we
might have the last evening here by ourselves in peace and quietness?"
"Yes, but if any one DID want to come it would seem churlish to shut
him out," said Demorest.
"I reckon you're feeling very much as I am," said Stacy, "that this good
fortune is rather crowding to us three alone. For myself, I know," he

continued, with a backward glance towards a blanketed, covered pile in
the corner of the cabin, "that I feel rather oppressed by--by its specific
gravity, I calculate--and sort of crampy and twitchy in the legs, as if I
ought to 'lite' out and do something, and yet it holds me here. All the
same, I doubt if anybody will come up--except from curiosity. Our luck
has made them rather sore down the hill, for all they're coming to the
dinner to-morrow."
"That's only human nature," said Demorest.
"But," said Barker eagerly, "what does it mean? Why, only this
afternoon, when I was passing the 'Old Kentuck' tunnel, where those
Marshalls have been grubbing along for four years without making a
single strike, I felt ashamed to look at them, and as they barely nodded
to me I slinked by as if I had done them an injury. I don't understand
it."
"It somehow does not seem to square with this 'gift of God' idea of
yours, does it?" said Stacy. "But we'll open the door and give them a
show."
As he did so it seemed as