Jackson Gregory

“ Sheldon made coffee, and she watched him curiously as he drank the black beverage; but she did not taste it.
“Look here, Paula,” he said when the silence had lasted on until after he had got his pipe going, “We’ve got some big questions ahead of us to answer, and we can’t begin too soon now. After all, death comes to us all, soon or late; it came to your father’s father and mother; it has come to mine; it will come to you and me some day. While we live we’ve got to be doing something. You’ve got to decide what you are going to do. ”

“ He had found gold before; he had known the wild fires it sets in a man’s brain. But never had he found gold like this, never had he known so seething a tumult.
“All men look for the mother lode!” he whispered. “Why shouldn’t it be waiting somewhere for the man who can find it? ”

“ And he hoped to find Paula.
He went straightway to the cliffs near which Dr. Hamilton had died. They stretched a mile or more to both north and south. Sheldon admitted to himself at the beginning that he had his work cut out ahead of him; thorough search here for the mouth of a possible cave might consume weeks. But all the time in the world was his. He set about his task methodically.
All day he climbed in and out among the boulders and spires of rock. At night he had found nothing. He returned to the cabin and, throwing himself upon the bunk which had once been Dr. ”