with the restlessness which
usually impels the average westerner to throw up ranch or business and
strike into the bush when word of a new mineral find comes down,
though much is demanded of those who take the gold trail, and, as a
rule, their gains are remarkably small.

"Whom did you leave to run the store?" asked Saunders.

"Nobody," said Jim. "Except two Siwash, there was nobody in the
settlement; and, anyway, the store was most empty when the boys came
along." He indicated the strangers with a wave of his hand. "As they
hadn't a dollar between them I told them I'd give them credit, and
they could pack up with them anything they could find in the place."

Saunders appeared to find some difficulty in preserving a befitting
self-restraint, but he accomplished it.

"What did you do with the money you'd taken already?" was his next
question.

"Wrapped it up in a flour-bag," said the man from Okanagan,
cheerfully. "Then I pitched the thing into an empty sugar-keg. Wrote
up what the boys owed you, and put the book into the keg too. Anyway,
I wrote up as much as I could remember."

Saunders looked at Devine, who stood by, and there was contempt beyond
expression in his eyes.

"That," he said, "is just the kind of blamed fool he is."

Then he turned to Jim.

"If I were to talk until to-morrow I couldn't quite tell you what I
think of you."

Jim only grinned, and, sitting down by the fire, set about preparing a
meal, while Saunders, who appeared lost in reflection, presently
turned again to Devine.

"I guess I'll go down this afternoon," he said. "We'll have a fresh
crowd pouring in, and they'll want provisions. Anyway, I've headed off
those company men, and if it's necessary I can go through to the
railroad and get hold of Weston by the wires."

Devine admitted that this might be advisable, and Saunders, who was a
man of action, took the back trail in the next half-hour. He had held
his own in one phase of the conflict which it was evident must be
fought before the Grenfell Consolidated could be floated, and it was
necessary that somebody should go down to despatch the specimens to
Weston.

They were duly delivered to the latter; and the day after he got them
it happened that he sat with Ida on a balcony outside a room on the
lower floor, at the rear of Stirling's house. It was about four
o'clock in the afternoon and very hot, but a striped awning was
stretched above their heads, and a broad-leafed maple