scrapper," with any weapon of his opponent's choice.

Perhaps it was because he could have throttled Slim with his thumb and
finger, have shaken the life out of him with one hand, that Bruce
forbore; perhaps it was because he saw in Slim's erratic, surly moods a
something not quite normal, a something which made him sometimes wonder
if his partner was well balanced. At any rate, he bore his shirking, his
insults, and his deliberate selfishness with a patience that would have
made his old companions stare.

The bar of sand and gravel upon which their cabin stood, and where Bruce
now was working, was half a mile in width and a mile and a half or so in
length. He had followed a pay streak into the bank, timbering the tunnel
as he went, and he wheeled his dirt from this tunnel to his rocker in a
crude wheelbarrow of his own make.

He filled his gold pan from the wheelbarrow, and dumped it into the
grizzly, taking from each pan the brightest-colored pebble he could find
to place on the pile with others so that when the day's work was done he
could tell how many pans he had washed and so form some idea as to how
the dirt was running per cubic yard.

His dipper was a ten-pound lard can with a handle ingeniously attached,
and as he dipped water from the river into the grizzly, the steady,
mechanical motion of the rocker and dipper had the regularity of a
machine. If he touched the dirt with so much as his finger tips he
washed them carefully over the grizzly lest some tiny particle be lost.
Bruce was as good a rocker as a Chinaman, and than that there is no
higher praise.

When the black sand began to coat the Brussels-carpet apron, Bruce
stooped over the rocker frequently and looked at the shining yellow
specks.

"She's looking fine to-day! She's running five dollars to the cubic yard
if she's running a cent!" he ejaculated each time that he straightened
up after an inspection of the sand, and the fire of hope and enthusiasm,
which is close to the surface in every true miner and prospector, shone
in his eyes. Sometimes he frowned at the rocker and expressed his
disapproval aloud, for years in isolated places had given him the habit
of loneliness, and he talked often to himself. "It hasn't got slope
enough, and I knew it when I was making it. I don't believe I'm saving
more than seventy per cent. I'll tell you, hombre, grade is everything
with this fine gold and heavy sand."

While he rocked he lifted his eyes and searc