"Well, yes! I reckon. She asked me to stand betwixt Hornsby and you.
So don't YOU tackle him, and I'll see HE don't tackle you," and with a
portentous wink Mountain Charley whipped up his horses and was gone.

Cass opened the packet. It contained nothing but the ring. Unmitigated
by any word of greeting, remembrance, or even raillery, it seemed almost
an insult. Had she intended to flaunt his folly in his face, or had she
believed he still mourned for it and deemed its recovery a sufficient
reward for his slight service? For an instant he felt tempted to follow
Charley's advice, and cast this symbol of folly and contempt in the dust
of the mountain road. And had she not made his humiliation complete by
begging Charley's interference between him and his enemy? He would go
home and send her back the handkerchief she had given him. But here the
unromantic reflection that although he had washed it that very afternoon
in the solitude of his own cabin, he could not possibly iron it, but
must send it "rough dried," stayed his indignant feet.

Two or three days, a week, a fortnight even, of this hopeless resentment
filled Cass's breast. Then the news of Kanaka Joe's acquittal in the
State Court momentarily revived the story of the ring, and revamped a
few stale jokes in the camp. But the interest soon flagged; the fortunes
of the little community of Blazing Star had been for some months
failing; and with early snows in the mountain and wasted capital in
fruitless schemes on the river, there was little room for the indulgence
of that lazy and original humor which belonged to their lost youth and
prosperity. Blazing Star truly, in the grim figure of their slang, was
"played out." Not dug out, worked out, or washed out, but dissipated in
a year of speculation and chance.

Against this tide of fortune Cass struggled manfully, and even evoked