The Three Partners | Page 8

idea of sleeping in the same room with 'em. They're altogether too
much for us three men to be left alone with."
"You don't mean that you think that anybody would attempt"--said
Demorest.
Stacy curled a fighting lip rather superciliously. "No; I don't think
THAT--I rather wish I did. It's the blessed chunks of solid gold that
seem to have got US fast, don't you know, and are going to stick to us
for good or ill. A sort of Frankenstein monster that we've picked out of
a hole from below."
"I know just what Stacy means," said Barker breathlessly, rounding his
gray eyes. "I've felt it, too. Couldn't we make a sort of cache of it--bury
it just outside the cabin for to-night? It would be sort of putting it back
into its old place, you know, for the time being. IT might like it."
The other two laughed. "Rather rough on Providence, Barker boy," said
Stacy, "handing back the Heaven-sent gift so soon! Besides, what's to
keep any prospector from coming along and making a strike of it? You
know that's mining law--if you haven't preempted the spot as a claim."
But Barker was too staggered by this material statement to make any
reply, and Demorest arose. "And I feel that you'd both better be turning
in, as we've got to get up early." He went to the corner of the cabin, and
threw the blanket back over the pan and its treasure. "There that'll keep
the chunks from getting up to ride astride of you like a nightmare." He
shut the door and gave a momentary glance at its cheap hinges and the

absence of bolt or bar. Stacy caught his eye. "We'll miss this security in
San Francisco--perhaps even in Boomville," he sighed.
It was scarcely ten o'clock, but Stacy and Barker had begun to undress
themselves with intervals of yawning and desultory talk, Barker
continuing an amusing story, with one stocking off and his trousers
hanging on his arm, until at last both men were snugly curled up in
their respective bunks. Presently Stacy's voice came from under the
blankets:--
"Hallo! aren't you going to turn in too?"
"Not yet," said Demorest from his chair before the fire. "You see it's
the last night in the old shanty, and I reckon I'll see the rest of it out."
"That's so," said the impulsive Barker, struggling violently with his
blankets. "I tell you what, boys: we just ought to make a watch-night of
it--a regular vigil, you know--until twelve at least. Hold on! I'll get up,
too!" But here Demorest arose, caught his youthful partner's bare foot
which went searching painfully for the ground in one hand, tucked it
back under the blankets, and heaping them on the top of him, patted the
bulk with an authoritative, paternal air.
"You'll just say your prayers and go to sleep, sonny. You'll want to be
fresh as a daisy to appear before Miss Kitty to-morrow early, and you
can keep your vigils for to-morrow night, after dinner, in the back
drawing-room. I said 'Good-night,' and I mean it!"
Protesting feebly, Barker finally yielded in a nestling shiver and a
sudden silence. Demorest walked back to his chair. A prolonged snore
came from Stacy's bunk; then everything was quiet. Demorest stirred
up the fire, cast a huge root upon it, and, leaning back in his chair, sat
with half-closed eyes and dreamed.
It was an old dream that for the past three years had come to him daily,
sometimes even overtaking him under the shade of a buckeye in his
noontide rest on his claim,--a dream that had never yet failed to wait for
him at night by the fireside when his partners were at rest; a dream of

the past, but so real that it always made the present seem the dream
through which he was moving towards some sure awakening.
It was not strange that it should come to him to-night, as it had often
come before, slowly shaping itself out of the obscurity as the vision of
a fair young girl seated in one of the empty chairs before him. Always
the same pretty, childlike face, fraught with a half-frightened,
half-wondering trouble; always the same slender, graceful figure, but
always glimmering in diamonds and satin, or spiritual in lace and pearls,
against his own rude and sordid surroundings; always silent with parted
lips, until the night wind smote some chord of recollection, and then
mingled a remembered voice with his own. For at those times he
seemed to speak also, albeit with closed lips, and an utterance inaudible
to all but her.
"Well?" he said sadly.
"Well?" the voice repeated, like a gentle echo blending with his own.
"You know it all now," he went on. "You know