his wasted fingers across the sturdy
brown hand that leaned on the edge of his bunk, and turning with
difficulty on his pillow, he said in a voice scarce above a whisper,
"Thompson, old fellow, you and Platte have been kind, very kind, to me.
I won't trouble you much more now. I'm going to say--good-bye to you;
and--Thompson--I want you to do one little thing for me--when spring
comes." He reached into a chink among the logs by his side and drew
forth an envelope containing a few letters, a photograph of a woman's
face, fair and tender, and a gold ring.

Thompson took it with a hand that shook as his rarely did.

"Send it soon--it's addressed and all--send it to her. Maybe she will be
glad to know I am--gone--at last--out of her path--out of the way--and
the world. She sent it back to me--would not have it--or me. Now--" Then
his mind seemed to wander, and he rambled incoherently, repeating over
and over again a name that sounded like that on the envelope. "You will
do it, won't you, Thompson?" said he, rallying suddenly.

Thompson's voice was husky and thick as he answered impressively, "Damn
me ef I don't!" adding mentally, as he glanced at the package, "Damn her
skin, whoever she is! She's at the bottom of all this here business, you
bet."

Gentleman Dick's lips moved as if he were speaking, and as Thompson
leaned over him he could hear, in a broken whisper, "Gold--in old
boot--under bed--Old Platte half."

He heard no more. The pressure of the wasted fingers relaxed, the weary
head sunk slowly back on the pillow, and the tired eyelids drooped over
the glazing eyes.

"Dick!" said Thompson--"Dick, old man!"

Too late. Away through the softly-falling snow, from the Blue with its
stillness and solitude, from its heartaches and sorrows and troubles,
the weary spirit had fled, and Gentleman Dick was at rest.

* * * * *

Spring had come again; the snow had melted from the valleys; the grass
and the ferns and the green grass and bright lichens once more peeped
out among the gray boulders and about the feet of the stately pines; and
the Blue, freed from its wintry prison, sang merrily over the gravelly
reaches. And as the miners flocked down that spring from over the range,
they saw near by the Chihuahua Claim and the deserted cabin, in a square
formed by four gigantic pines, a neatly-built cairn of boulders. One big
gray boulder rested securely on top of all, and on it was hacked, in