be be in the hill so I fetched my drills, an' powder, an' run in a
drift. I hadn't got very far in when I shot the whole face out and
busted into a big cave. The whole inside was lined with rotten quartz,
but it wasn't poor man's gold. It was a stamp mill claim.

"I prodded around in the cave all day, an' that evenin' some Injuns come
an' camped near my tent. They was goin' to trap fox, an' I didn't want
'em around, so I went over to their camp an' told 'em there was a
_tamahnawus_ around. Two of 'em was scairt stiff, but one wasn't. I told
'em they was a fox that could talk like a man. But one buck, he figured
I was lyin', so to make the play good, I told 'em I had the medicine to
make the _tamahnawus_ do what I told him. I said I would make him burn
the snow, so I slips back to my tent and laid a fuse out on the lake,
an' put about a pound of powder at the end of it, an' while she was
burnin' I went back. The Injuns could see the fuse sputterin' out on the
lake, but this one buck said it was a piece of rope I'd set afire. I
told him if it was rope it would go out, but if it was _tamahnawus_ I'd
tell him to make a big fire. So I yelled at the _tamahnawus_ a couple of
times, and when the spark got to the powder she flashed up big, an' like
to scairt them Injuns to death. In the morning they beat it--an' that
was the end of them. If you're smart you can out-guess them Injuns."
The man paused, and Connie, although he said nothing, smiled grimly for
well he knew that the man had paid dearly for his trick.

"Nex' day I decided to shoot down a face of the rotten quartz to see how
thick she was, an' I drilled my holes an' tamped in the shots, an' fired
'em. I had gone back in the cave, instead of steppin' outside, an' when
the shots went off the whole ledge tipped over, an' plugged up my
tunnel. I'd shoved my drills an' powder into the tunnel, an they was
buried.

"Well, there I was. At first I yelled, an' hollered, an' I clawed at the
rock with my hands. Then I come to. The cave was dark as pitch, the only
light I could see come through under the rocks where the foxes use--only
they wasn't any foxes then. There I was without nothin' to eat an'
drink, an' no way out. I had matches, but there wasn't nothin' to burn.
Then I started out to explore the cave. It was an awful job in the dark.
Now an' then I'd light a match an' hold it till it burnt my fingers. It
was a big cave, an' around a corner of rock, five or six hundred foo