ild from the blankets, where Bud had
deposited him unceremoniously.

"Yes, Bud pik-k." Bud stepped up on the bunk, which brought his head
above the low eaves. He leaned and looked, and scraped away the caked
mud. "Good glory! The kid's found a cache of some kind, sure as you
live!" And he began to claw out what had been hidden behind the mud.

First a buckskin bag, heavy and grimed and knobby. Gold inside it, he
knew without looking. He dropped it down on the bunk, carefully so
as not to smash a toe off the baby. After that he pulled out four
baking-powder cans, all heavy as lead. He laid his cheek against the log
and peered down the length of it, and jumped down beside the bunk.

"Kid's found a gold mine of his own, and I'll bet on it," he cried
excitedly. "Looky, Cash!"

Cash was already looking, his eyebrows arched high to match his
astonishment. "Yeah. It's gold, all right. Old man Nelson's hoard, I
wouldn't wonder. I've always thought it was funny he never found any
gold in this flat, long as he lived here. And traces of washing here and
there, too. Well!"

"Looky, Boy!" Bud had the top off a can, and took out a couple of
nuggets the size of a cooked Lima bean. "Here's the real stuff for yuh.

"It's yours, too--unless--did old Nelson leave any folks, Cash, do yuh
know?"

"They say not. The county buried him, they say. And nobody ever turned
up to claim him or what little he left. No, I guess there's nobody got
any better right to it than the kid. We'll inquire around and see. But
seein' the gold is found on the claim, and we've got the claim according
to law, looks to me like--"

"Well, here's your clean-up, old prospector. Don't swallow any, is all.
let's weigh it out, Cash, and see how much it is, just for a josh."

Lovin Child had nuggets to play with there on the bed, and told the
world many unintelligible things about it. Cash and Bud dumped all the
gold into a pan, and weighed it out on the little scales Cash had for
his tests. It was not a fortune, as fortunes go. It was probably all the
gold Nelson had panned out in a couple of years, working alone and with
crude devices. A little over twenty-three hundred dollars it amounted
to, not counting the nuggets which Lovin Child had on the bunk with him.

"Well, it's a start for the kid, anyway," Bud said, leaning back and
regarding the heap with eyes shining. "I helped him find it, and I kinda
feel as if I'm square with him now for not giving him my ha