desolation. He gathered together hastily
a few articles that were especially his own--rather that the free
communion of the camp, from indifference or accident, had left wholly
to him. He hesitated for a moment over his rifle, but, scrupulous in
his wounded pride, turned away and left the familiar weapon that in the
dark days had so often provided the dinner or breakfast of the little
household. Candor compels me to state that his equipment was not large
nor eminently practical. His scant pack was a light weight for even his
young shoulders, but I fear he thought more of getting away from the
Past than providing for the Future.

With this vague but sole purpose he left the cabin, and almost
mechanically turned his steps towards the creek he had crossed that
morning. He knew that by this route he would avoid meeting his
companions; its difficulties and circuitousness would exercise his
feverish limbs and give him time for reflection. He had determined to
leave the claim, but whence he had not yet considered. He reached the
bank of the creek where he had stood two hours before; it seemed to him
two years. He looked curiously at his reflection in one of the broad
pools of overflow, and fancied he looked older. He watched the rush and
outset of the turbid current hurrying to meet the South Fork, and to
eventually lose itself in the yellow Sacramento. Even in his
preoccupation he was impressed with a likeness to himself and his
companions in this flood that had burst its peaceful boundaries. In the
drifting fragments of one of their forgotten flumes washed from the
bank, he fancied he saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the
Lone Star claim.

The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before--a calm so
inconsistent with that hour and the season as to seem
portentous--became more marked in contrast to the feverish rush of the
turbulent watercourse. A few clouds lazily huddled in the west
apparently had gone to rest with the sun on beds of somnolent poppies.
There was a gleam as of golden water everywhere along the horizon,
washing out the cold snow-peaks, and drowning even the rising moon. The
creek caught it here and there, until, in grim irony, it seemed to bear
their broken sluice-boxes and useless engines on the very Pactolian
stream they had been hopefully created to direct and carry. But by some
peculiar trick of the atmosphere the perfect plenitude of that golden
sunset glory was lavished on the rugged