Fifty thousand dollars stood between Billy's credit and Billy's downfall. Lafond had those fifty thousand dollars to get rid of. The sum was not great, but neither was it small; and to induce another to spend fifty thousand, in a few months, without any encouraging return, might have seemed, to an ordinary man, a project worthy of careful foresight. Not so Lafond. "A fool for luck," he repeated and awaited Billy's reappearance.
There was Molly's affair with Cheyenne Harry, for instance. What could be better? Lafond had known Mortimer by reputation for a great many years. He was acquainted with the details of the transaction of Mulberry Gulch, and how he and a man named Dutch Pete had swindled all Custer City; he knew too of Harry's various wild escapades in the early Indian skirmishes--on both sides some men said; of his wonderful fortitude in enduring hardship, and his equally wonderful periods of relaxation when back again in the towns; and he knew, best of all from his point of view, Harry's reputation as a man among women. Since this flirtation had lasted so long, to Lafond's mind it must already have passed the limits. The natural sequence would be followed out. In time Cheyenne Harry would have a mistress the more.
In other words, without the slightest trouble or encouragement on his part, the girl would be debauched. Then, through artfully colored vague hints, he would let slip the real facts of her breeding. He was student enough of character to know that she would gnaw her heart out with a passionate remorse, the more intense because of that very innate purity of instinct which now made Harry's task a difficult one. Lafond had absolutely nothing to do but congratulate himself, smoke his pipe, and spend long hours with his friend the entomologist.
After the first flutter over the Easterners' visit had subsided, the camp settled back with wonderful celerity into its accustomed habits. At first it expected Billy's reappearance within a few days. The return was postponed to the end of the week. The end of the week gave Copper Creek to understand that it would have to wait a short time longer. Then came another postponement. And so on, until the little community had taken up its usual prospecting, work o' day, play o' night existence, and the return of Billy was looked upon as an inevitable event, but hazily in the future, not imminent enough immoderately to disturb the current of men's thoughts.