“Ef I was you,” said Drummond gloomily, “I wouldn’t flourish that yer ring around much afore folks.  I’ve seen better men nor you strung up a tree by Vigilantes for having even less than that in their possession.”

“And I wouldn’t say much about bein’ up so d——­d early this morning,” added an even more pessimistic comrade; “it might look bad before a jury.”

With this the men sadly dispersed, leaving the innocent Cass with the ring in his hand, and a general impression on his mind that he was already an object of suspicion to his comrades,—­an impression, it is hardly necessary to say, they fully intended should be left to rankle in his guileless bosom.

Notwithstanding Cass’s first hopeful superstition, the ring did not seem to bring him nor the camp any luck.  Daily the “clean up” brought the same scant rewards to their labors, and deepened the sardonic gravity of Blazing Star.  But, if Cass found no material result from his treasure, it stimulated his lazy imagination, and, albeit a dangerous and seductive stimulant, at least lifted him out of the monotonous grooves of his half-careless, half-slovenly, but always self-contented camp life.  Heeding the wise caution of his comrades, he took the habit of wearing the ring only at night.  Wrapped in his blanket, he stealthily slipped the golden circlet over his little finger, and, as he averred, “slept all the better for it.”  Whether it ever evoked any warmer dream or vision during those calm, cold, virgin-like spring nights, when even the moon and the greater planets retreated into the icy blue, steel-like firmament, I cannot say.  Enough that this superstition began to be colored a little by fancy, and his fatalism somewhat mitigated by hope.  Dreams of this kind did not tend to promote his efficiency in the communistic labors of the camp, and brought him a self-isolation that, however gratifying at first, soon debarred him the benefits of that hard practical wisdom which underlaid the grumbling of his fellow-workers.

“I’m dog-goned,” said one commentator, “ef I don’t believe that Cass is looney over that yer ring he found.  Wears it on a string under his shirt.”

Meantime, the seasons did not wait the discovery of the secret.  The red pools in Blazing Star highway were soon dried up in the fervent June sun and riotous night winds of those altitudes.  The ephemeral grasses that had quickly supplanted these pools and the chocolate-colored mud, were as quickly parched and withered.  The footprints of spring became vague and indefinite, and were finally lost in the impalpable dust of the summer highway.

In one of his long, aimless excursions, Cass had penetrated a thick undergrowth of buckeye and hazel, and found himself quite unexpectedly upon the high road to Red Chief’s Crossing.  Cass knew by the lurid cloud of dust that hid the distance, that the up coach had passed.  He had already reached that stage of superstition when the most trivial occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the mystery of his treasure.  His eyes had mechanically fallen to the ground again, as if he half expected to find in some other waif a hint or corroboration of his imaginings.  Thus abstracted, the figure of a young girl on horseback, in the road directly before the bushes he emerged from, appeared to have sprung directly from the ground.