his envirament
'cause he generally eats it. My burro was fat, an' the clump of pine
trees had mostly disappeared. I loaded up my stuff, shook hands with
Slocum, and started down the mountain. Just as I got fully started
Slocum sez to me, "I 'm sure sorry to see you go. I don't generally get
much friendly with folks any more, but I took to you from the first,
an' any time I can do you a favor, all you got to do is to wink."

"What's your general plan of occupation, Slocum?" sez I.

"All that I ever expect to do for the remainder of my days," sez he,
"is to search for my Rheumatiz Remedy."

"Well," sez I, "any time you get to do me a favor in that line, it'll
be when I'm too weak to wink." So we parted the best o' friends, an' I
went on to a lumber camp where I put in the winter bossin' a gang. I
didn't know much about lumber, but the men there was just the same as
anywhere else, an' we got along fine.

I was bossin' a little ranch up in Idaho next June when I heard tell of
a big strike in the Esmeralda range--not such a great distance from
where I had spent the week with Slocum. The report had it that a feller
named Slocum had located the big ace of gold mines, an' I was some et
up with curiosity to see if it was the same Slocum; but I was needed at
the ranch that winter, an' as I took a likin' for the young feller who
was tryin' to make it go, I stuck to him, an' it wasn't until the
followin' July that I pulled out an' floated down that way.

Well, it was the same old Slocum sure enough. He was the most onlucky
cuss 'at ever breathed, I reckon. Every time he had made up his mind to
do something, Fate had stepped up an' voted again it. He had wasted the
best part of his life locatin' gold mines 'at wouldn't hang out, until
at last even he got disgusted an' went to huntin' for his Injun root to
cure rheumatiz with. First thing he knew, he had stumbled on a bonanza
lode in the Esmeralda range. This here lode was a peach. Ten-foot face
on top, just soggy with gold an' silver, an' copper an' tin enough to
pay expenses. It just looked as if they's said, "Now then, there's
Slocum; he been hammered so long he's got callous to it. Let's jus' see
how he'd act if we switched his luck on him." An' they sure done it.

Slocum, he scratched around until he see that it wasn't no joke, an'
then he set bait for a couple o' capitalists. He trapped two beauties,
an' they put up the assets an' went in, equal partners. They sunk
shafts