good
fellows, and they had a right to be cheerful. Up there, on the rude
shelf above the stove, was a row of old tomato-cans brimful of Bonanza
gold. There they stood, not even covered. Dim as the light was, you
could see the little top nuggets peering out at you over the ragged
tin-rims, in a never locked shanty, never molested, never bothered
about. Nearly every cabin on the creek had similar chimney ornaments,
but not everyone boasted an old coat, kept under the bunk, full of the
bigger sort of nuggets.

The Colonel was always ready with pretended admiration of such
bric-a-brac, but the truth was he cared very little about this gold he
had come so far to find. His own wages, paid in dust, were kept in a
jam-pot the Boy had found "lyin' round."

The growing store shone cheerfully through the glass, but its value in
the Colonel's eyes seemed to be simply as an argument to prove that
they had enough, and "needn't worry." When the Boy said there was no
doubt this was the district in all the world the most overdone, the
Colonel looked at him with sun-tired, reproachful eyes.

"You want to dissolve the pardnership--I see."

"I don't."

But the Colonel, after any such interchange, would go off and smoke by
himself, not even caring for Buckeyes'. The work was plainly overtaxing
him. He slept badly, was growing moody and quick to take offence. One
day when he had been distinctly uncivil he apologized for himself by
saying that, standing with feet always in the wet, head always in the
scorching sun, he had taken a hell of a cold. Certain it was that,
without sullenness, he would give in to long fits of silence; and his
wide, honest eyes were heavy again, as if the snow-blindness of the
winter had its analogue in a summer torment from the sun. And his
sometimes unusual gentleness to his companion was sharply alternated
with unusual choler, excited by a mere nothing. Enough if the Boy were
not in the tent when the Colonel came and went. Of course, the Boy did
the cooking. The Colonel ate almost nothing, but he made a great point
of his pardner's service in doing the cooking. He would starve, he
said, if he had to cook for himself as well as swing a shovel; and the
Boy, acting on pure instinct, pretended that he believed this was so.

Then came the evening when the Boy was so late the Colonel got his own
breakfast; and when the recreant did get home, it was to announce that
a man over at the Buckeyes' had just offered him