till remained in the employ of the
company as watchman over the all but abandoned property.

But this morning he was not visible. Young Jerry only was to be seen,
sitting on the cabin step and singing the ancient chantey. He had cooked
and eaten his breakfast all by himself, and had just come out to take a
look at the world. Twenty feet before him stood the steel drum round
which the endless cable worked. By the drum, snug and fast, was the
ore-car. Following with his eyes the dizzy flight of the cables to the
farther bank, he could see the other drum and the other car.

The contrivance was worked by gravity, the loaded car crossing the river
by virtue of its own weight, and at the same time dragging the empty car
back. The loaded car being emptied, and the empty car being loaded with
more ore, the performance could be repeated--a performance which had
been repeated tens of thousands of times since the day Old Jerry became
the keeper of the cables.

Young Jerry broke off his song at the sound of approaching footsteps, A
tall, blue-shirted man, a rifle across the hollow of his arm, came out
from the gloom of the pine-trees. It was Hall, watchman of the Yellow
Dragon mine, the cables of which spanned the Sacramento a mile farther
up.

"Hello, younker!" was his greeting. "What you doin' here by your
lonesome?"

"Oh, bachin'," Jerry tried to answer unconcernedly, as if it were a very
ordinary sort of thing. "Dad's away, you see."

"Where's he gone?" the man asked.

"San Francisco. Went last night. His brother's dead in the old country,
and he's gone down to see the lawyers. Won't be back till tomorrow
night."

So spoke Jerry, and with pride, because of the responsibility which had
fallen to him of keeping an eye on the property of the Yellow Dream, and
the glorious adventure of living alone on the cliff above the river and
of cooking his own meals.

"Well, take care of yourself," Hall said, "and don't monkey with the
cables. I'm goin' to see if I can't pick up a deer in the Cripple Cow
Canon."

"It's goin' to rain, I think," Jerry said, with mature deliberation.

"And it's little I mind a wettin'," Hall laughed, as he strode away
among the trees.

Jerry's prediction concerning rain was more than fulfilled. By ten
o'clock the pines were swaying and moaning, the cabin windows rattling,
and the rain driving by in fierce squalls. At half past eleven he
kindled a fire, and promptly at the stroke of twelve sat dow