laid on the
fire. A collapsible canvas bucket, filled with drinking water, was hung
on a low limb of the tree, and the supply of night wood was conveniently
placed near Mr. Allen's end of the bed.

Then Ham got a long, cotton bag, from which he produced several handfuls
of pinion nuts. They were always the introduction to the camp-fire
stories. He seated himself, drew his knees up close to his body, leaned
back against the great tree trunk, and shouted: "All aboard, let her
flicker. What's first? Mr. Allen, let's have that promised story you
didn't get out of Dad. I believe you just side-tracked him on purpose, so
you could tell it yourself. Come, now, wasn't that it?" He began to
whistle in a low tone as he waited for the story. Fat stretched himself
at full length before the fire, his head resting on his blanket roll.
Phil had backed up on one side of Mr. Allen and Willis on the
other. Everybody was waiting.

"Well, once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a little fairy,"
began Mr. Allen.

"You don't say so," interrupted Ham, as he tossed a stick into the fire
in a disgusted manner. "Was it fairy long ago? I can recite Mother Goose
rhymes myself. You'll have to do better than that."

Phil nudged Mr. Allen in the ribs and chuckled to himself.

"Well, then, how's this: Not many years ago, in a wonderful little
village, there--"

"Was a wooden wedding at which two Poles were married," interrupted Ham,
with a mischievous grin on his face.

"You're kind of hard to please, Ham," suggested Fat, as he rolled over to
warm his other side.

"How's this? The night was dark and stormy," started in Mr. Allen. Ham
settled back contentedly. "That's something like it. 'The night was dark
and stormy,' and what else?"

"Well, if you must have it. I have heard a good many stories of how the
Old Road House was burned, but they are all different. Which one shall I
tell you? I'll tell you the one that Daddy tells himself, because it
probably comes nearest the truth. As a matter of fact, though, I don't
believe any one knows just how it burned down.

"You know Dad spent his boyhood on a great southwestern cattle ranch, and
knew at first hand a great many things about Indians and tramping and
mining and 'explorin',' as he calls it. Just why he left this ranch life
he never told me exactly, but I know he had his first case of real gold
fever in forty-nine, and has never gotten over it. His father was a
United States marshal