it that name--the Cross of Gold!"

"Humph! It looks to me, from what I've heard of it," growled the older
prospector, "that the Double Cross would have been a heap more
fittin' name for it. It's busted everybody that ever had it."

The younger man laughed softly and remonstrated: "Now, what's the use
in saying that? It wasn't the Croix d'Or that broke my father----"

"But his half in it was all he had left when he died!"

"That is true, and it is true that he sunk more than a hundred
thousand in it; but it was the stock-market that got him. Besides, how
about Sloan, my father's old-time partner? He's not broke, by a long
shot!"

"No," came the grumbling response, "he's not busted, just because he
had sense enough to lay his hand down when he'd gone the limit."

"Lay his hand down? Say, Bill, you're a little twisted, aren't you?
Better go back over the last month or two and think it over. We, being
partners, are working up in the Coeur d'Alenes. Our prospect pinches
out. We've got just seven hundred left between us on the day we bring
the drills and hammers back, throw them in the corner of the cabin,
and say 'We're on a dead one. What next?' Then we get the letter
saying that my father, whom I haven't seen in ten years, nor heard
much of, owing to certain things, is dead, and that all he left was
his half of the Croix d'Or. The letter comes from whom? Sloan! And it
says that although he and my father, owing to father's abominable
temper, had not been intimate for a year or two, he still respected
his memory, and wanted to befriend his son. Didn't he? Then he said
that he had enough belief left in the Croix d'Or to back it for a
hundred thousand more, if I, being a practical miner, thought well of
it. Do you call that laying down a hand? Humph!"

The elder man finished rolling a cigarette, and then looked at him
with twinkling, whimsical eyes, as if continuing the argument merely
for the sake of debate.

"Well, if he thinks it's such a good thing, why didn't he offer to buy
you out? Why didn't they work her sooner? She's been idle, and
water-soaked, for three years, ain't she? As sure as your name's Dick
Townsend, and mine's Bill Mathews, that old feller back East don't
think you're goin' to say it's all right. He knows all about you! He
knows you don't stand for no lies or crooked work, and are a fool for
principle, like a bee that goes and sticks his stinger into somethin'
even though he knows he's goin' to ki