dd to see him, a man, busy cooking!) had
bread batter already started. He took one of the gold pans, dumped
into it some flour, a pinch or two of saleratus, and a quart or two of
the water. He mixed away with his hands, adding flour and water until
the batter was correct, formed it into a loaf, laid it in another pan,
well greased with bacon rind, covered it with the first pan, and set
the "oven" well down among coals that he had raked out to one side. He
poured a little water into the fry pan, or spider, laid in a lot of
chunks and strips of dried-beef or jerky, and salted it and put it on
the fire. He took out a handful of coffee beans that had been roasting
in the fry pan before he used the pan for the stew (and how good they
smelled!), crushed them in a piece of cloth between two stones, and
turned them into the coffee-pot.

"You must have been there before," commented Mr. Grigsby.

"Well, I've been a soldier, you know," explained Mr. Adams. "This is
soldiers' fare; that's all."

"Strangers, you're new to the diggin's, I reckon," asserted a caller,
who strolled in and coolly sat down. He was an exceedingly powerful
man--as tall as the Fremonter, broad and heavy, a veritable giant. His
shaggy whiskers were bright red. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat,
below which hung his red hair to mingle with his whiskers; his red
shirt was open at the hairy throat, his stained coarse trousers were
belted with a piece of rawhide, through which was thrust a knife and
pistol, and he was barefooted. He certainly was the biggest and most
ferocious-looking man that Charley had ever seen. Yet he acted very
harmless.

"Why so?" queried Mr. Adams, examining his bread.

"'Cause you're bread eaters, 'stead o' bein' flap-jackers. By that I
take it you've not been up into the flapjack country yon," and he
jerked his head in the direction of the foothills and mountains. "When
a man makes his squar' meals out o' flapjacks an' sow-belly, then he
can call himself a miner."

"You've been there, in the flapjack country, I suppose," invited Mr.
Adams.

"Have I, stranger? Wall, I should shout! I was one of the fust into
the diggin's after Jim Marshall discivvered color. Fact is, I'm jest
down from thar now, only stoppin' hyar at Woodchuck's Delight to rest
my feet. They've got rheumatiz powerful bad, wadin' in the water so
much."

Charley had noted that many of the men in the camp were barefooted, as
if their feet were sor