g eyes. It was hard talking with
her, because of her lingering speech. Oh, she was a massive woman, for
the small shoes she wore. She was tall, as high as Rainbow Pete's
shoulder. She purchased scent for her hair. This I know, having seen it
standing in the bottles. She was a prairie woman.

This was a wild night we spent on Mushrat, after Pete's reproving the
woman there in Scarecrow Charlie's place. Smash McGregor, the little
doctor, was sitting between us in his yellow skull-cap; and Willis
Countryman was reading and drinking in one corner, listening to the
laughing men there. They were laughing, thinking of the fortunes there
would be here when blasting begun.

But Rainbow Pete was not one of the rockmen. No. He told them strange
tales of gold. Heh! He was athirst for gold. Strange tales he told of
gold. Once how in Australia he had hold of a lump of it as big as poor
McGregor's skull, but isn't it a perishing pity, oh my, this was just a
desert where he was, there was no water, he grew faint carrying the
nugget. Our mouths were open when the man told us he had dropped it in
the desert, with his name carved on it.

"There it is to this day, sinking in the sands," he said. Oh, the proud
woman from Regina. There she turned her dark eyes over our heads, never
looking at the plausible man at all; but she had heard him.

"Gold?" said Smash McGregor. "Why, there's gold enough in the world."

"Ay, there's comfort too, if you know where to take it," said Rainbow
Pete, twirling here at his mustache and looking at the woman.

"There's gold," said McGregor, "for any man."

"Yes, my hearty," said Pete, "it's twinkling in the river-beds, it
shines in the sands under your feet, but still it's hard to get in your
two fisties."

"Why," said Smash McGregor, "did you never hear there's a pot of gold at
the foot of every rainbow?"

Oh, my friend, as he went mentioning the rainbow, there was a
thunder-cap on the brow of that great sailor.

"So they call me--Rainbow Pete," he said.

"Look then," said McGregor, "take the pick, and strike the ground at
your feet."

Rainbow Pete was not hearing them.

"This is a man I have been following on many trails," he muttered, "This
man who made a rainbow of me. Mark this, he shall thirst, if I meet him.
Ay! He shall burn with these fingers at his throat. He shall have gold
poured into him like liquid, however."

It was plain he had no love for this man who had fashioned him in the