Adams chuckled reminiscently. "Had to do it to make my day-before-yesterday
lie hold water. And she was immensely taken with the scrawls, especially
with one of them."

Winton flushed under the bronze.

"I suppose I don't need to ask which one."

Adams' grin was a measure of his complacence.

"Well, hardly."

"She took it away with her?"

"Took it, or tore it up, I forget which."

"Tell me, Morty, was she very angry?"

The other took the last hint of laughter out of his eyes before he
said solemnly: "You'll never know how thankful I was that you were
twenty miles away."

Winton's cup was full, and he turned the talk abruptly to the
industrial doings and accomplishments of the day. Adams made a verbal
report which led him by successive steps up to the twilight hour when
he had stood with Branagan on the brink of the placer drain, but,
strangely enough, there was no stirring of memory to recall the
incident of the upward-climbing miners.