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Updated: June 22, 2025
Was it because Rodaine knew that wealth did lie concealed there? Was it because Squint Rodaine had better information even than the faithful, hard-working, unfortunate Harry? Fairchild suddenly took hope.
It ain't going to be hard to find that rattler!" Fairchild felt the logic of the remark and ceased his worriment. Quietly, as though nothing had happened, the three men went down the stairs, passed the sleeping night clerk and headed back to the sheriff's office, where waited Anita and Harry, who had completed his last duties in regard to the chalky-faced Maurice Rodaine. The telephone jangled.
But now he saw it: that if Rodaine, as an expert on mining, had condemned the Blue Poppy, it could have meant only one thing, the denial of bond by the judge and the lack of freedom for Harry. Fairchild rubbed a hand across his brow. "I can't figure it," came at last. "And especially since his son is the accuser and since I got the best of them both last night!" "Got the best of 'em? You?"
Hurriedly he walked to the far side of the chamber and there, pretending to examine a bit of ore, brought the missive from its place of secretion, to unfold it with trembling fingers, then to stare at the words which showed before him: "Squint Rodaine is terribly worried about something. Has been on an awful rampage all morning. Something critical is brewing, but I don't know what.
Afternoon and most of Ohadi was there. Fairchild could distinguish the form of Anita Richmond in the hundreds of women and men clustered about the opening of the tunnel, and for once she was not in the company of Maurice Rodaine. He hurried to her and she smiled at his approach. "Have they found anything yet?" "Nothing so far. Except that there is plenty of water in the shaft.
The highwayman talked with a "Cousin-Jack" accent, for all Cornishmen are "Cousin Jacks" in the mining country. Those two features in themselves, Fairchild thought, as he stumbled along in the darkness, were sufficient to start the scheming plot in the brain of Maurice Rodaine, already ugly and evil through the trick played by Harry on his father and the rebuke that had come from Anita Richmond.
Fairchild lay and watched him until he was out of sight, and he knew instinctively that a surveyor would only cover beaten territory now. Squint Rodaine, he felt sure, had pointed out to him the Blue Poppy mine. But he did not follow the direction given by his pursuer. Squint Rodaine was in the hills.
So 're you. So 's every other human being that thinks he's a regular man. So's Maurice Rodaine. Don't know about the rest of you but I have n't got a chance. Don't even think of it any more look on it as a necessary affliction, like wearing winter woolens and that sort of thing. Don't let it bother you. The problem right now is to get your partner out of jail. How much money have you got?"
Not that Fairchild had been influenced in the slightest by the testimony of Crazy Laura; the presence of Squint Rodaine and his son had shown too plainly that they were connected in some way with it, that, in fact, they were responsible. An opportunity had arisen for them, and they had seized upon it.
A bat fluttered about, just passing his face, its vermin-covered wings sending the musty air close against his cringing flesh. Far at the other side of the big hall a mountain rat resumed its gnawing. Then it ceased. Squint Rodaine was talking again. "So you 're not going to tell me about 'the one', eh? What have you got this door shut for?" "No door 's shut." "It is don't you think I can see?
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