, that's the first
proposition I'll hump myself up against. Then a general whoop-la! for
a week--Seattle or 'Frisco, I don't care a rap which, and then--"

"Out of money and after a job."

"Not on your family tree!" Bishop roared. "Cache my sack before I go
on the tear, sure pop, and then, afterwards, Southern California.
Many's the day I've had my eye on a peach of a fruit farm down
there--forty thousand'll buy it. No more workin' for grub-stakes and
the like. Figured it out long; ago,--hired men to work the ranch, a
manager to run it, and me ownin' the game and livin' off the
percentage. A stable with always a couple of bronchos handy; handy to
slap the packs and saddles on and be off and away whenever the fever
for chasin' pockets came over me. Great pocket country down there, to
the east and along the desert."

"And no house on the ranch?"

"Cert! With sweet peas growin' up the sides, and in back a patch for
vegetables--string-beans and spinach and radishes, cucumbers and
'sparagrass, turnips, carrots, cabbage, and such. And a woman inside
to draw me back when I get to runnin' loco after the pockets. Say, you
know all about minin'. Did you ever go snoozin' round after pockets?
No? Then just steer clear. They're worse than whiskey, horses, or
cards. Women, when they come afterwards, ain't in it. Whenever you
get a hankerin' after pockets, go right off and get married. It's the
only thing'll save you; and even then, mebbe, it won't. I ought 'a'
done it years ago. I might 'a' made something of myself if I had.
Jerusalem! the jobs I've jumped and the good things chucked in my time,
just because of pockets! Say, Corliss, you want to get married, you
do, and right off. I'm tellin' you straight. Take warnin' from me and
don't stay single any longer than God'll let you, sure!"

Corliss laughed.

"Sure, I mean it. I'm older'n you, and know what I'm talkin'. Now
there's a bit of a thing down in Dawson I'd like to see you get your
hands on. You was made for each other, both of you."

Corliss was past the stage when he would have treated Bishop's meddling
as an impertinence. The trail, which turns men into the same blankets
and makes them brothers, was the great leveller of distinctions, as he
had come to learn. So he flopped a flapjack and held his tongue.

"Why don't you waltz in and win?" Del demanded, insistently. "Don't
you cotton to her? I know you do, or you wouldn't come back to cabin