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Updated: October 17, 2024
The people in the café had looked on with respectful and yet eager curiosity, a murmur of affectionate comment running about the tables. "I'm quite satisfied," he repeated again, as he tossed a note on the table to satisfy his account. Solange's mouth curled scornfully as she noted again the stack of saucers indicating his habits.
A moment later as he entered to gather Solange's equipment, he saw the soldier seated at the rough table busy with paper and fountain pen. As Sucatash went past him, carrying an armload of blankets and a tarpaulin, De Launay held out a yellow paper. "She will want this," he said, and then bent over his writing. Again, when Sucatash came in for more stuff, De Launay stopped him.
Under the deep shadow of her hat brim, Solange's eyes smoldered, dim and mysterious. "You are Monsieur Banker!" she asserted, tonelessly. "You need not be frightened. I have not come to ask you for an accounting yet. It is for another purpose that I am here." "Shore! Anything I kin do fer old Pete's gal all yuh got to do is ask me, honey! Old Jim Banker; that's me!
Already occasional snowflakes were drifting down, and the chill was beginning to bite even through the warm fleece that lined mademoiselle's coat. The men decided to make camp. They pitched Solange's tent in a sheltered spot not far above the stream. They themselves slept in the open under heavy tarps.
But there had been no rock that could answer the description near the camp. At least there had been only one, and that one had been the flat outcrop on which Banker had lain at length and from which he had attempted to shoot De Launay. Then swiftly he recalled Solange's cry of warning and his own swift reaction.
Still, the feeling of dissatisfaction persisted. In some subtle way the two mushroomed bullets were the same and yet were different to the unused one. De Launay tried to force Solange's bullet back into the shell, finding that it went in after some force was applied. Then, withdrawing it, he took the other two and tried to do the same with them. The difference became apparent at once.
There was a slow mutter of astonishment rising from the men crowded about the walls and in front of the crude bar. It was a murmur that contained the elements of a threat. "I give you first shot, Jim," came the half-mocking voice of De Launay beating, half heard, on Solange's ears, where the astounding reversal of her notions was causing her brain almost to reel.
Important, swaggering, and braggart, they assumed the airs of an aristocracy, as of men set apart and elevated by success. Outside, in the lull occasioned by Solange's dramatic entrance, noises of the camp could be heard through the flimsy walls. Far down the cañon faint shouts could be heard. Some one was calling to animals of some sort, apparently. A faint voice, muffled by snow, raised a yell.
On the following morning, De Launay, finding his patients doing well, once more left the camp after seeing that everything was in order and food for the invalids prepared and set to their hands. Among Solange's effects he had found a pair of prism binoculars, which he slung over his shoulder.
It was certain that, throughout all these years there had been many to search for it and the treasure it was supposed to hold. Yet none had found it. Solange's premonition made him smile tolerantly. Still, he was pledged to the search, and he would go through with it. They would not find it, of course, but there might be some way in which he could make up the disappointment to her.
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