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ng the rigors of winter as during the doubtful blessings of summer, stood on the slopes, their thousand bayonets guarding against trespass where only pressing necessity could drive a human foot. Sheep-sage, which grew low upon the ground, and unostentatious and dun, was found here, where no flocks came to graze; this was the one life-giving thing which sprang from that blasted spot. The lowest elevation on the doctor's claim was several hundred feet above the river, from which he hauled the water which he drank and used for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he had pitched on something good. His only comfort in those first days was the thought of the money which he had taken from Shanklin, with the aid of the gambler's own honest little die. That cash was now safe in the bank at Meander. There was enough of it, everything else failing, to take him--and somebody--back to his own place when she was ready to go; enough to do that and get the automobile, take the world on its vain side, and pull success away from it. He was able for it now; no doubt of his ability to climb over any obstacle whatever remained after his wrestling match with the river in the Buckhorn Canyon. There was no job ahead of him that he could even imagine, as big as that. Nobody had come forward to make him an offer for his place. Jerry Boyle had not appeared, nothing had been seen of the man who accosted him at the window the morning he filed. Although he had remained in Meander two days after that event, nobody had approached him in regard to the land which so many had seemed anxious to get before it came into his ownership. Boyle he had not seen since the evening Dr. Slavens and Agnes met him in the gorge riding in such anxious haste. Perhaps the value of the claim, if value lay in it, was the secret of a few, and those few had joined forces to starve out his courage and hope. If nobody came forward with a voluntary offer for the land, it never would be worth proving up on and paying the government the price asked for it. All over that country there was better land to be had without cost. As the days slipped past and nobody appeared with ten thousand dollars bulging his pockets, Slavens began to talk to himself among the solitude
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