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guessing,” Dan reminded him. “We don’t have scales. It could be less, or it could be a bit more. We’ll know for sure when Morgan puts it in writing.” He returned Luke’s hug and then pushed him away with a playful slap across the boy’s thin buttocks. “Off with you, boy, and get ready. Frankie’ll give you what grub you’ll need; I told him you’d probably be going in the next day or so. And you can take my mare; she’s a better ride than that pinto of yours, and Pa’ll be pleased to see she’s come to no harm.”
    Luke’s preparations were soon completed, and the moon had risen by the time he had made his brief farewells. He swung himself onto the back of Dan’s bay mare, and with his blanket roll and small sack of provisions strapped to his saddle, he set off for home. The mining camp at Thayer’s Bend was in darkness as he rode down its rutted track, his passing setting a few dogs barking but arousing no one else, and he did not pause there.
    He had a long way to go, he reminded himself, but he was glad to be going, and his spirits lightened with every mile. It would be great to see Ma and Pa again, great to tell Pa that he and Dan would soon be rich men and that they would be coming home for good the minute Jasper Morgan paid them their share and released them.
    The mare trotted briskly along the shadowed track, picking her way carefully over the scars that countless wagon wheels had left in their wake, and Luke pursed his lips and whistled a cheerful little tune as he let her have her head.

CHAPTER II
    Barely fourteen days since he had left the diggings, Luke found himself once more in sight of the huddle of tents and log cabins that constituted the Thayer’s Bend mining camp.
    The visit home, by which he had set so much store, had lasted exactly a day, and he was returning from it chastened and more than a little rebellious. Religious scruples had again affected his father; the old man had refused the bag of gold dust, and during the waking hours of his brief stay Luke had been compelled to listen to a seemingly endless tirade of condemnation and reproach concerning his evil ways and the ungodliness of the search for riches in which he was engaged.
    Two missionaries from Great Salt Lake City had called at the farm during his absence, his mother had confided wryly.
    “Fine young fellers they were—mannerly and decent. But since they was here, your pa’s been having a real battle with his conscience. He feels now he shouldn’t never have let you and Dan go to the goldfields. You’ve gone against the will of God, both of you, he says, and he only wants you back here if you pay over the gold you’ve found to the church. D’you reckon you can do that, Luke?”
    He had hated having to reject her suggestion, Luke recalled, feeling unmanly tears pricking at his eyes. Throughout the long ride back, his mother’s stricken face had haunted him, but he and Dan had worked too hard for their strike, he told himself, for either of them willingly to hand over the proceeds of their toil to a church to which they owed no real allegiance. True, they had been reared in the Mormon faith, but during the years their father had lapsed from its teachings, they, too, had lapsed by default, and their mother … He sighed. Ma had tried hard, for the old man’s sake, but her heart had never really been in it, for she was of Irish descent and had been brought up as a Catholic. And she certainly did not hold with polygamy… .
    His tired horse stumbled, and Luke forced himself to give his attention to his riding. He was stiff and saddlesore, but another half hour should see him in the camp, and from there it was only five miles up the valley to their own claim. He would take a bottle of whiskey with him, he decided—buy it in camp with a few ounces of the dust his pa had scorned— and let Dan have a drink or two before listening to his account of his trip home. Dan would be upset, he knew, but would surely agree