town." He stopped and added with a
sigh of relief, "We can just as well count them out, fr'm now on--an'
fergit about 'em."

"Oh," said the Little Woman, and smiled to herself. "Well, if you are
anxious about that patch of brush in the canyon, we'll go and see what's
behind it. To-morrow is Sunday, anyway."

"I'd a made up the time, if it wasn't," Casey assured her with dignity.
"I've been waitin' a good many years for a look at that Injun Jim gold."

"And it's just possible that I have been almost within reach of it for the
past four years and didn't know it! Well, I always have believed that Fate
weaves our destinies for us; and a curious pattern is the weaving,
sometimes! I'll go with you, Casey Ryan, and I hope, for your sake, that
Indian Jim's mine is behind that clump of bushes. And I hope," she added,
with a little laugh whose meaning was not clear to Casey, "I hope you get
a million dollars out of it! I should like to point to Casey Ryan, the
mining millionaire and say, 'That plutocratic gentleman over there once
knocked me down with a hammer, and washed my dishes for two weeks, and
really, my dears, you should taste his sour-dough biscuits!'"

Casey went away to his camp and lay awake a long time, not thinking about
the Injun Jim mine, if you please, but wondering what he had done to make
the Little Woman give him hell about his biscuits. Good Lord! Did she
still blame him for hitting her with that double-jack?--when he knew and
she knew that she had made him do it!--and if she didn't like his
sour-dough biscuits, why in thunder had she kept telling him she did?

He tucked the incident away in the back of his mind, meaning to watch her
and find out just what she did mean, anyway. Her opinion of him had become
vital to Casey; more vital than the Injun Jim mine, even.

He saddled the buckskin mule next morning and after breakfast the three
set out, with a lunch and two canteens of water. The Little Woman was in a
very good humor and kept Casey "jumpin' sideways," as he afterwards
confessed to me, wondering just what she meant or whether she meant
nothing at all by her remarks concerning his future wealth and dignity and
how he would forget old friends.

She even pretended she had forgotten the place, and was not at all sure
that this was the right canyon, when they came to it. She studied
landmarks and then said they were all wrong and that the place was marked
in her mind by something entirely different a