Root Mountains, after which it sometimes cleared and was open weather

for weeks. But this was when it came early in September; the snow that

fell now would in all probability lie until spring.



At any rate, there was wood to be cut, enough to last out a week's

storm. But, first, Bruce told himself, he must clean up the rocker, else

he would lose nearly the entire proceeds of his day's work. The gold was

so light that much of it floated and went off with the water when the

sand was wet again, after it had once dried upon the apron.



Bruce placed a gold pan at the end of the rocker, and, with a clean

scrubbing brush, carefully worked the sand over the Brussels-carpet

apron, pouring water into the grizzly the while.



"That trip up the canyon cost me half a day's wages," he thought as he

saw the thin yellow scum floating on the top of the pan.



Sitting on his heel by the river's edge, where he had made a quiet pool

by building a breakwater of pebbles, he agitated and swirled the sand

in the gold pan until only a small quantity remained, and while he

watched carefully lest some of the precious specks and flakes which

followed in a thick, yellow string behind the sand slip around the

corners and over the edge, he also cast frequent glances at the peaks

that became each moment more densely enveloped in the clouds.



"When she cuts loose she's going to be a twister," and he added grimly,

as instinctively his eyes sought the saddleback or pass over which the

ancient trail of the Sheep-eater Indians ran: "Those game hogs better

pull their freight if they count on going out as they came in."



His fingers were numb when he stood up and shook the cold river water

from them, turning now to look across for a sight of Slim.



"I've cut his share of wood all summer, so I guess there's no use

quitting now. Turning pancakes is about the hardest work he's done since

we landed on the bar. Oh, well"--he raised one big shoulder in a shrug

of resignation--"we'll split this partnership when we get out of here.

By rights I ought to dig out now."



The chips flew as he swung the ax with blows that tested the tough oak

handle. Bruce Burt was a giant in his strength, and as unconscious of

the greatness of it as a bear. He could not remember that he had ever

fully tried it. He never had lifted a weight when he had not known that,

if necessary, he could lift a little more. His physique had fulfilled

the promise of his sturdy youth, and he was as little aware that it,

too, was remarkable as he was of the fact that men and women turned in

admiration to look again at his dark, unsmiling face upon the rare

occasions when he had walked the streets of the towns.



He was as splendid a specimen of his kind as Old Felix, as primitive

nearly, and as shy. His tastes had led him into the wilderness, and he

had followed the gold strikes and the rumors of gold strikes from

Sonora, in Old Mexico, to the Siberian coast, on Behring Sea, in search

of a new Klondike. He had lived hard, endured much in the adventurous

life of which he seldom talked. His few intimates had been men like

himself--the miners and prospectors who built their cabins in the

fastnesses with Hope their one companion, to eat and sleep and work

with. He was self-educated and well informed along such lines as his

tastes led him. He read voraciously all that pertained to Nature, to her

rocks and minerals, and he knew the habits of wild animals as he knew

his own. Of the people and that vague place they called "the outside,"

he knew little or nothing.



He had acquaintances and he had enemies in the mining camps which

necessity compelled him to visit at long intervals for the purchase of

supplies. Agreeable and ingratiating storekeepers who sold him

groceries, picks, shovels, powder, drills, at fifty per cent. profit,

neat, smooth-shaven gamblers, bartenders, who welcomed him with

boisterous camaraderie, tired and respectable women who "run" boarding

houses, painted, highly-perfumed ladies of the dance hall, enigmatic

Chinamen, all were types with which he was familiar. But he called none

of them "friend." Their tastes, their interests, their standards of

conduct were different from his own. They had nothing in common, yet he

could not have explained exactly why. He told himself vaguely that he

did not "cotton" to them, and thought the fault was with himself.



Bruce was twenty-seven, and his mother was still his ideal of womanhood.

He doubted if there were another like her in all the world. Certainly he

never had seen one who in the least approached her. He remembered her

vividly, the grave, gray, comprehending eyes, the long braids of hair

which lay like thick new hempen rope upon the white counterpane.



His lack of a substantial education--a college education--was a sore

spot with him which did not become less sore with time. If she had lived

he was sure it would have been different. With his mother to intercede

for him he knew that he would have had it. After her death his father

grew more taciturn, more impatient, more bent on preparing him to follow

in his footsteps, regardless of his inclinations. The "lickings" became

more frequent, for he seemed only to see his mistakes and childish

faults.



The culmination had come when he had asked to be allowed to leave the

country school where he rode daily, and attend the better one in the

nearest village, which necessitated boarding. After nerving himself for

days to ask permission, he had been refused flatly.



"What do you think I'm made of--money?" his father had demanded. "You'll

stay where you are until you've learned to read, and write, and figure:

then you'll help me with the cattle. Next thing you'll be wantin' to

play a flute or the piano."



He thought of his father always with hardness and unforgiveness, for he

realized now, as he had not at the time he ran away from home, what the

thousands of acres, the great herd of sleek cattle, meant--the fortune

that they represented.



"He could have so well afforded it," Bruce often mused bitterly. "And

it's all I would have asked of him. I didn't come into the world because

I wanted to come, and he owed it to me--my chance!"



The flakes of snow which fell at first and clung tenaciously to Bruce's

dark-blue flannel shirt were soft and wet, so much so that they were

almost drops of rain, but soon they hardened and bounced and rattled as

they began to fall faster.



As he threw an armful of wood behind the sheet-iron camp stove, Bruce

gave a disparaging poke at a pan of yeast bread set to rise.



"Slim and I will have to take this dough to bed with us to keep it warm

if it turns much colder. Everything's going to freeze up stiff as a

snake. Never remember it as cold as this the first storm. Well, I'll get

a pail of water, then let her come." He added uneasily: "I wish Slim

would get in."



His simple preparations were soon complete, and when he closed the heavy

door of whip-sawed lumber it was necessary to light the small kerosene

lamp, although the dollar watch ticking on its nail said the hour was

but four-thirty.



He eyed a pile of soiled dishes in disgust, then set a lard bucket of

water to heat.



"Two days' gatherings! After I've eaten four meals off the same plate it

begins to go against me. Slim would scrape the grub off with a stick and

eat for a year without washing a dish. Seems like the better raised some

fellers are the dirtier they are when they're out like this. Guess I'll

wash me a shirt or two while I'm holed up. Now where did I put my

dishrag?"



His work and his huge masculinity looked ludicrously incongruous as he

bent over the low table and scraped at the tin plates with his thumb

nail or squinted into the lard buckets, of which there seemed an endless

array.



The lard bucket is to the prospector what baling wire is to the

freighter on the plains, and Bruce, from long experience, knew its

every use. A lard bucket was his coffee-pot, his stewing kettle, his

sour-dough can. He made mulligan in one lard bucket and boiled beans in

another. The outside cover made a good soap dish, and the inside cover

answered well enough for a mirror when he shaved.



He wrung out his dishcloth now and hung it on a nail, then eyed the bed

in the end of the cabin disapprovingly.



"That's a tough-looking bunk for white men to sleep in! Wonder how

'twould seem if 'twas made?"



While he shook and straightened the blankets, and smote the bear-grass

pillows with his fists, he told himself that he would cut some fresh

pine boughs to soften it a little as soon as the weather cleared.



"I'm a tidy little housewife," he said sardonically as he tucked away

the blankets at the edge. "I've had enough inside work to do since I

took in a star boarder to be first-class help around some lady's home."

A dead tree crashed outside. "Wow! Listen to that wind! Sounds like a

bunch of squaws wailing; maybe it's a war party lost in the Nez Perce

Spirit Land. Wish Slim would come." He walked to the door and listened,

but he could hear nothing save the howling of the wind.



He was poking aimlessly at the bread dough with his finger, wondering if

it ever meant to rise, wondering if his partner would come home in a

better humor, wondering if he should tell him about the salt, when Slim

burst in with a swirl of snow and wind which extinguished the tiny lamp.

In the glimpse Bruce had of his face he saw that it was scowling and

ugly.



Slim placed his rifle on the deer-horn gun rack without speaking and

stamped the mud and snow from his feet in the middle of the freshly

swept floor.



"I was kind of worried about you," Bruce said, endeavoring to speak

naturally. "I'm glad you got in."



"Don't know what you'd worry about me for," was the snarling answer.

"I'm as well able to take care of myself as you are."



"It's a bad night for anybody to be roaming around the hills." Bruce was

adjusting the lamp chimney and putting it back on the shelf, but he

noticed that Slim's face was working as it did in his rages, and he

sighed; they were in for another row.



"You think you're so almighty wise; I don't need you to tell me when

it's fit to be out."



Bruce did not answer, but his black eyes began to shine. Slim noticed it

with seeming satisfaction, and went on:



"I saw them pet sheep of yourn comin' down. Did you give 'em salt?"



Bruce hesitated.



"Yes, Slim, I did. I suppose I shouldn't have done it, but the poor

little devils----"



"And I'm to go without! Who the ---- do you think you are to give away my

salt?"



"Your salt----" Bruce began savagely, then stopped. "Look here, Slim!"

His deep voice had an appealing note. "It wasn't right when there was

so little, I'll admit that, but what's the use of being so onery? I

wouldn't have made a fuss if you had done the same thing. Let's try and

get along peaceable the few days we'll be cooped up in here, and when

the storm lets up I'll pull out. I should have gone before. But I don't

want to wrangle and quarrel with you, Slim; honest I don't."



"You bet you don't!" Slim answered, with ugly significance.



Bruce's strong, brown fingers tightened as he leaned against the window

casement with folded arms. His silence seemed to madden Slim.



"You bet you don't!" he reiterated, and added in shrill venom: "I might

'a' knowd how 'twould be when I throwed in with a mucker like you."



"Careful, Slim--go slow!" Bruce's eyes were blazing now between their

narrowed lids, but he did not move. His voice was a whisper.



"That's what I said! I'll bet your father toted mortar for a plasterer

and your mother washed for a dance hall!"



Slim's taunting, devilish face, corpse-like in its pallor above his

black beard, was all Bruce saw as he sprang for his throat. He backed

him against the door and held him there.



"You miserable dog--I ought to kill you!" The words came from between

his set teeth. He drew back his hand and slapped him first on the right

cheek, then on the left. He flung Slim from him the length of the cabin,

where he struck against the bunk.



Slim got to his feet and rushed headlong toward the door. Bruce thought

he meant to snatch his rifle from the rack, and was ready, but he tore

at the fastening and ran outside. Bruce watched the blackness swallow

him, and wondered where he meant to go, what he meant to do on such a

night. He was not left long in doubt.



He heard Slim coming back, running, cursing vilely as he came. The shaft

of yellow light which shot into the darkness fell upon the gleaming

blade of the ax that he bore uplifted in his hand.



"Slim!"



The answer was a scream that was not human. Slim was a madman! Bruce saw

it clearly now. Insanity blazed in his black eyes. There was no

mistaking the look; Slim was violently, murderously insane!



"I'm goin' to get you!" His scream was like a woman's screech. "I've

meant to get you all along, and I'm goin' to do it now!"



"Drop it, Slim! Drop that ax!"



But Slim came on.



Instinctively Bruce reached for the heavy, old-fashioned revolver

hanging on its nail.



Slim half turned his body to get a longer, harder swing, aiming as

deliberately for Bruce's head as though he meant to split a stick of

wood.



Bruce saw one desperate chance and took it. He could not bring himself

to stop Slim with a gun. He flung it from him. Swift and sure he swooped

and caught Slim by the ankles in the instant that he paused. Exerting

his great strength, he hurled him over his shoulder, ax and all, where

he fell hard, in a heap, in the corner, between the bunk and wall. The

sharp blade of the ax cut the carotid artery.



Bruce turned to see a spurt of blood. Slim rolled over on his back, and

it gushed like a crimson fountain. Bruce knelt beside him, trying

frantically to bring together the severed ends, to stop somehow the

ghastly flow that was draining the madman's veins.



But he did not know how, his fingers were clumsy, and Slim would not lie

still. He threshed about like a dying animal, trying to rise and stagger

around the room. Finally his chest heaved, and his contracted leg

dropped with a thud. Bruce stared at the awful pallor of Slim's face,

then he got up and washed his hands.



He looked at the watch ticking steadily through it all; it was barely a

quarter to five. He spread his slicker on the bunk and laid Slim on it

and tried to wash the blood from the floor and the logs of the cabin

wall, but it left a stain. He changed his shirt--murderers always

changed their shirts and burned them.



Slim was dead; he wouldn't have to get supper for Slim--ever again. And

he had killed him! Mechanically he poked his finger into the dough. It

was rising. He could work it out pretty soon. Slim was dead; he need not

get supper for Slim; he kept looking at him to see if he had moved. How

sinister, how "onery" Slim looked even in death. He closed his mouth and

drew the corner of a blanket over the cruel, narrow face. How still it

seemed after the commotion and Slim's maniacal screams!



He had joined the army of men who have killed their partners. What

trifles bring on quarrels in the hills; what mountains molehills become

when men are alone in the wilderness! That cook in the Buffalo Hump who

tried to knife him because he stubbed his toe against the coffee-pot,

and "Packsaddle Pete," who meant to brain him when they differed over

throwing the diamond hitch; and now Slim was dead because he had given a

handful of salt to the mountain sheep.



It did not seem to matter that Slim had said he meant to kill him,

anyhow, or that the way in which his malignant eyes had followed his

every movement took on new significance in the light of what had

happened. He blamed himself. He should have quit long ago. He should

have seen that Slim's ill-balanced mind needed only a trifle to shove it

over the edge. It had never seemed so still in the cabin even when Slim

was gone as it did now. Mechanically he set about getting supper, making

as much noise as he could.



But he was unable to eat after it was on the table before him. He drank

his coffee and stared at the bacon and cold biscuit a while, then washed

the dishes again. Slim seemed to be getting farther and farther away.



The storm outside had become a blizzard. Old Mother Westwind took to her

heels and the Boss of the Arctic raged. It occurred to Bruce that it

would be hard to bury Slim if the ground froze, and that reminded him

that perhaps Slim had "folks" who ought to know.



Bruce filled the stove, and shoved his bread in the oven; then he pulled

Slim's war bag from under the bunk and dumped the contents on the table,

hoping with all his heart that he would not find an address. He could

not imagine how his should find the words in which to tell them that he

had killed Slim.



There were neckties, samples of ore, a pair of silk suspenders, and a

miner's candlestick, one silk sock, a weasel skin, a copy of "The

Gadfly," and a box of quinine pills. No papers, no letters, not a single

clew to his identity. Bruce felt relief. Wait--what was this? He took

the bag by the corners, and a photographer's mailing case fell out. It

was addressed to Slim in Silver City, New Mexico, in a childish,

unformed hand.



He took out the picture and found himself smiling into the eyes that

smiled up into his. He knew intuitively that it was Slim's sister, yet

the resemblance was the faintest, and there was not a trace of his

meanness in her look.



He had been right in his conjecture, Slim was "the runt of something

good." There was no mistaking the refinement and good breeding in the

girl's sweet face.



Slim had known better, yet nearly always he had talked in the language

of the uneducated Westerner, in the jargon of yeggmen, and the

vernacular of the professional tramps with whom he had hoboed over the

West--a "gay cat," as he was pleased to call himself, when boasting of

the "toughness" of his life. He had affected uncleanliness, uncouthness;

but in spite of his efforts the glimmer of the "something good" of which

he was the runt had shown through.



Slim had had specific knowledge of a world which Bruce knew only by

hearsay; and when it had suited his purpose, as when Bruce had first met

him in Meadows, he had talked correctly, even brilliantly, and he had

had an undeniable charm of manner for men and women alike. But, once

well started down the river, he had thrown off all restraint, ignoring

completely the silent code which exists between partners in the hills.



Such fellows were well named "black sheep," Bruce thought, as he looked

at the picture.



A letter had been wrapped around the photograph, with an address and a

date line twelve years old. The letter read:



DEAR BROTHER: We have just heard that you were working in a mine

down there and so I thought I would write and tell you that I

hope you are well and make a lot of money. I hope you do and

come home because we are awful poor and mother says if I don't

marry well she don't know what we will do because there are

mortgages on everything and we don't keep horses any more and

only one servant which is pretty hard for mother. The girl is

sassy sometimes but mother can't let her go because she can't

pay her yet. Please, Freddie, come home and help us. Everything

dreadful has happened to us since father died. Mother will

forgive you for being bad and so do I although it was not nice

to see our names and pictures in the papers all the time. Write

to me, Freddie, as soon as you get this. Your loving sister,



HELEN.



P. S.--I am thirteen to-day and this is my picture. I wish I

could go West too, but don't mention this when you write.



Bruce wondered if Slim had answered. He would wager his buckskin bag of

dust that he had not. The marvel was that he had even kept the letter.

He looked again at the date line--twelve years--the mortgages had long

since been foreclosed, if it had depended upon Slim to pay them--and she

was twenty-five. He wondered if she'd "married well."



Slim was a failure; he stood for nothing in the world of achievement;

for all the difference that his going made, he might never have been

born. Then a thought as startling as the tangible appearance of some

ironic, grinning imp flashed to his mind. Who was he, Bruce Burt, to

criticise his partner, Slim? What more had he accomplished? How much

more difference would his own death make in anybody's life? His mother's

labored words came back with painful distinctness: "I've had such hopes

for you, my little boy. I've dreamed such dreams for you--I wanted to

see them all come true." An inarticulate sound came from him that was

both pain and self-disgust. He was close to twenty-eight--almost

thirty--and he'd spent the precious years "just bumming round." Nothing

to show for them but a little gold dust and the clothes he wore. He

wondered if his mother knew.



Her wedding ring was still in a faded velvet case that he kept among his

treasures. He never had seen a woman who had suggested ever so faintly

the thought that he should like to place it on her finger. There had

been women, of a kind--"Peroxide Louise," in Meadows, with her bovine

coquetry and loud-mouthed vivacity, yapping scandal up and down the

town, the transplanted product of a city's slums, not even loyal to the

man who had tried to raise her to his level.



Bruce never had considered marrying; the thought of it for himself

always made him smile. But why couldn't he--the thought now came

gradually, and grew--why shouldn't he assume the responsibilities Slim

shirked if conditions were the same and help was still needed? In

expiation, perhaps, he could halfway make amends.



He'd write and mail the letter in Ore City as soon as he could snowshoe

out. He'd express them half the dust and tell them that 'twas Slim's.

He'd----"OO--oo--ough!" he shivered--he'd forgotten to stoke the fire.

Oh, well, a soogan would do him well enough.



He pulled a quilt from under Slim and wrapped it about his own

shoulders. Then he sat down again by the fireless stove and laid his

head on his folded arms upon the rough pine table. The still body on

the bunk grew stark while he slept, the swift-running river froze from

shore to shore, the snow piled in drifts, obliterating trails and

blocking passes, weighting the pines to the breaking point, while the

intense cold struck the chill of death into the balls of feathers

huddled for shelter under the flat branches of the spruces.