his mother and he remembered how she had
assured him gravely that it was a fine idea indeed. It was from her that
he had inherited his passionate fondness for animals. Cruelty to a dumb
brute hurt him like a blow.

On the trip out from Ore City an overworked stage horse straining on a
sixteen per cent. grade and more had dropped dead in the harness--a
victim to the parsimony of a government that has spent millions on
useless dams, pumping plants, and reservoirs, but continues to pay
cheerfully the salaries of the engineers responsible for the blunders;
footing the bills for the junkets of hordes of "foresters," of
"timber-inspectors" and inspectors inspecting the inspectors, and what
not, yet forcing the parcel post upon some poor mountain mail-contractor
without sufficient compensation, haggling over a pittance with the man
it is ruining like some Baxter street Jew.

Like many people in the West, Bruce had come to have a feeling for some
of the departments of the government, whose activities had come under
his observation, that was as strong as a personal enmity.

He put the picture of the stage-horse, staggering and dying on its feet,
resolutely from his mind.

"I never will sleep if I get to thinking of that," he told himself. "It
makes me hot all over again."

From this disquieting subject his thought reverted to his own affairs,
to "Slim's" family and his self-appointed task, to the placer and
Sprudell. Nor were these reflections conducive to sleep. More and more
he realized how much truth there was in Sprudell's taunts. Without money
how could he fight him in the Courts? There were instances in plenty
where prospectors had been driven from that which was rightfully theirs
because they were without the means to defend their property.

Squaw Creek was the key to the situation. This was a fact which became
more and more plain. However, Sprudell was undoubtedly quite as well
aware of this as he was himself and would lose no time in applying for
the water right. The situation looked dark indeed to Bruce as he tossed
and turned. Then like a lost word or name which one gropes for for
hours, days, weeks perhaps, there suddenly jumped before Bruce's eyes a
paragraph from the state mining laws which he had glanced over
carelessly in an idle moment. It stood out before him now as though it
were in double-leaded type.

"If it isn't too late! If it isn't too late!" he breathed excitedly.
"Dog-gone, if it isn't too lat