e, so he stood
waiting while shrieking, screeching at every step, the Chinaman came on.

He flew at Smaltz's face like a wild-cat, clawing, scratching, digging
in his nails and screaming with every breath: "I savvy you! I savvy
you!"

Smaltz warded him off without striking, trying to get his hand over his
mouth; but in vain, and the Chinaman kept up his shrill accusing cry, "I
savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!" There was little chance, however, of
his being heard above the rush of the water through the sluice-boxes and
the bumping and grinding together of the rocks and boulders that it
carried down.

Then Smaltz struck him. Toy fell among the rocks, sprawling backwards.
He got to his feet and came back. Once more he clawed and clung and once
more Smaltz knocked him down. A third time he returned.

"You're harder to kill nor a cat," Smaltz grinned without malice, but he
threw him violently against the sluice-box.

Toy lost his balance, toppled, and went over backward, reaching out
wildly to save himself as he fell. The water turned him over but he
caught the edge of the box. His loose purple "jumper" of cotton and silk
ballooned at the back as he swung by one hand in the on-rushing water,
thick and yellow with sand, filled with the grinding boulders that came
down as, though shot from a catapult, drowning completely his, agonized
cry of "Bluce! Bluce!"

It was only a second that he hung with his wild beseeching eyes on
Smaltz's scared face while his frail, old body acted as a wedge for the
racing water and the rocks. Then he let go and turned over and over
tumbling grotesquely in the wide sluice-box while the rocks pounded and
ground him, beat him into insensibility. He shot over the tail-race into
the river limp and unresisting, like a dead fish.

XXV

THE CLEAN-UP

Toy's disappearance was mysterious and complete. There was not a single
clue to show which way he had gone, or how, or why. Only one thing
seemed certain and that was that his departure was unpremeditated.

His potatoes were in a bucket of water, peeled and ready for dinner; the
bread he had set to raise was waiting to be kneaded; his pipe laid on
the window sill while his hoarded trinkets for the little Sun Loon were
still hidden under the pad of the bed in his tent. His fish-pole in its
usual place disposed of the theory that he had fallen in the river, and
although trained eyes followed every trail there was not a single
telltale track. H