"Desert girl, huh?" thickly muttered Basil Filer. "Huh--I know somethin' 'bout you. You was found on the desert, wasn't ye--when you's li'l' girl--baby girl? I know. Can't fool o' Filer. B'en huntin' you f'r years." He closed his eyes again, and his head sank forward on his breast.
Lucy shook him awake and prepared a dose of bromo-seltzer, which he readily drank at her command.
"How did you know about me, Uncle?" she asked. "What you said is the truth. I was found on the desert here when I was a baby girl. But how did you know? Tell me all about it. Do you know my father's name?"
"Sure! Sure! Name was Len-Len-Len-Leonard Prince. You're Jean Prince. Len Prince was m' ol' pardner. I'm lookin'--lookin' for the claim Len Prince and me and The Chink found--and lost ag'in. Rich! Yellow with gol'. You're Jean Prince--I know. I c'n prove it by your head. Tha's what I wanta see--yer head--down under the hair. That'll tell me you're Baby Jean Prince. Then I c'n find the gold."
Lucy clutched Al Drummond's arm. "Listen to him! Listen to him!" she breathed.
Hiram Hooker stood aghast in the entrance of the Palace Dance Hall. All eyes within were focused on a couple waltzing in the center of the floor to low music. The man was a Mr. Dalworth, Ragtown's new banker, in charge of the branch of a Los Angeles banking institution that had been opened in the frontier camp. The girl, smiling and radiant and glistening with pale-blue silk and gems, was his adventure girl, Jerkline Jo.
Never had Hiram seen Jo in anything but a flannel shirt, Stetson hat, and chaps or divided riding skirt. Despite the fact that she was making money fast and that he was working for her at ninety dollars a month, Hiram had not before looked upon her as entirely out of his reach. He was learning fast, and had lost much of his backwoods uncouthness. He loved Jerkline Jo as only a big-hearted, simple-souled man can love a woman. Some day, he had told himself, he would do something to make himself worthy of her, for he never would ask her to marry him while he was in her employ. He was too proud to ask an independent girl to marry him when he had nothing to offer.
That rare feminine creature gliding so gracefully over the floor with the dapper, well-dressed banker, however, plunged Hiram into the depths of despair. Financially, mentally, and now socially, he felt her altogether out of his world. He had forgotten until now her days at school and in polite society.