of luck. Under usual weather conditions, to avoid
cleaning up through the ice he would have been obliged to have shut down
at least a month before.

So the work kept on intermittently until an incredibly late date in
November. The leaves of the poison oak had turned crimson, the tall
tamaracks in the high mountains were gold, frost crystals glittered each
morning on the planks and boards, but Big Squaw creek kept running
steadily and the sunshine soon melted the skim ice that formed over
night.

By this time Bruce had a fresh worry. It kept him awake hour after hour
at night. The mercury was not looking right where it showed behind the
riffles. It was too lively. There was something in it, of course, but
not enough to thicken it as he had hoped. He could see the flakes of
gold sticking to it as though it had been sprinkled with Nepaul pepper
but the activity of it where it showed in quantity alarmed him more than
he would confess to himself.

The change of weather came in the night. That day he started to
clean-up. A chill wind was blowing from the east and the sky was dark
with drab, low-hanging clouds when Bruce put on his hip-boots and began
to take up riffles. A thin sheet of water flowed through the boxes, just
sufficient to keep the sand and gravel moving down as he took up the
riffles one at a time and recovered the mercury each had contained.

Bruce's feet and fingers grew numb working in the icy water with a
scrubbing brush and a small scoop but they were no colder than the cold
hand of Premonition that lay heavy upon him.

Behind the riffles at the top of the first box the mercury was
amalgam--all that he could have wished for--beyond that point it
suddenly stopped and all that he recovered as he worked down looked to
be as active as when he had poured it from the flask.

What was wrong? He asked himself every conceivable question as he worked
with aching hands and feet. Had he given the boxes too much grade? Had
he washed too fast--crowded the dirt so that it had not had time to
settle? Was it possible that after all the gold was too light and fine
to save in paying quantities?

Hope died hard and he tried to make himself believe that the lower boxes
and the tables had caught it--that there was more in the mercury than
there looked. But the tension as he took up riffle after rime with the
one result was like watching a long-drawn-out race with all one's
possessions staked on the losing horse.

He to