torn
and abraded hillside. A few weeks more, and a veil of forgetfulness
would be drawn over the feeble failures of the Lone Star claim. The
charming derelicts themselves, listening to the raindrops on the roof
of their little cabin, gazed philosophically from the open door, and
accepted the prospect as a moral discharge from their obligations. Four
of the five partners were present. The Right and Left Bowers, Union
Mills, and the Judge.

It is scarcely necessary to say that not one of these titles was the
genuine name of its possessor. The Right and Left Bowers were two
brothers; their sobriquets, a cheerful adaptation from the favorite game
of euchre, expressing their relative value in the camp. The mere fact
that Union Mills had at one time patched his trousers with an old flour
sack legibly bearing that brand of its fabrication, was a tempting
baptismal suggestion that the other partners could not forego. The
Judge, a singularly inequitable Missourian, with no knowledge whatever
of the law, was an inspiration of gratuitous irony.

Union Mills, who had been for some time sitting placidly on the
threshold with one leg exposed to the rain, from a sheer indolent
inability to change his position, finally withdrew that weather-beaten
member, and stood up. The movement more or less deranged the attitudes
of the other partners, and was received with cynical disfavor. It was
somewhat remarkable that, although generally giving the appearance of
healthy youth and perfect physical condition, they one and all simulated
the decrepitude of age and invalidism, and after limping about for a few
moments, settled back again upon their bunks and stools in their former
positions. The Left Bower lazily replaced a bandage that he had worn
around his ankle for weeks without any apparent necessity, and the Judge
scrutinized with tender solicitude the faded cicatrix of a scratch upon
his arm. A passive hypochondria, born of their isolation, was the last
ludicrously pathetic touch to their situation.

The immediate cause of this commotion felt the necessity of an
explanation.

"It would have been just as easy for you to have stayed outside with
your business leg, instead of dragging it into private life in that
obtrusive way," retorted the Right Bower; "but that exhaustive
effort isn't going to fill the pork barrel. The grocery man at Dalton
says--what's that he said?" he appealed lazily to the Judge.

"Said he reckoned the Lone Star wa