ith
gravel and sand to make the placer beds. You dig the placer bed, but
you have to use a crow-bar and powder on lodes, and break them to
pieces. Then you have to crush the pieces and wash the gold out or
unite it with mercury and get it that way. Lode mining takes
machinery, if it's done right, and it's expensive; but it lasts longer,
if it's any good, because you can follow the lode for miles. Placer
mining is sort of luck."

"If we find a lode, what'll we do with it, I wonder," pursued Billy.
"We haven't any machinery, or much powder, either."

"We'll get the machinery, all right, if we find the spot," asserted
Charley. "My father and Mr. Grigsby are going into this thing
scientifically; that's the only way to make a success; your father's no
slouch, either.

"I should say not," agreed Billy, loyally. "I guess we all together
can make a mine pay, if anybody can."

"This is awful rough traveling, isn't it!" remarked Charley, suddenly.
And Billy answered: "Kind of; but we were over worse. Had to haul the
oxen and horses up and down by ropes." Nevertheless, the going was, as
Charley had said, "awful." Steep slope after steep slope blocked the
way; the brush and timber grew thick; sometimes large rocks interposed;
and when the party weren't sliding they were climbing, dragging the
puffing pack animals. But the trail that had been taken always led on.

Camp was made beside a spring, in a little flat or cup surrounded by
timber over which peeked the snow-caps of the main range. For supper
Billy had his flapjacks, as Charley had promised; and how he did eat!
Nobody's appetite was especially poor, however.

"Now you're a Forty-niner, sure," informed Charley, to his fellow
partner. "You've got a fresh lining in your stomach. When we get
settled I'm going to practice till I can toss a flapjack up the cabin
chimney and catch it coming down on the outside. See?"

Up hill and down was it the next day, again. Shortly after noon they
came to a high ridge, covered with brush in spots, and in spots bare.
The three men climbed on, for a view ahead, but Charley and Billy
branched off, to a place that looked lower. Then, suddenly, Charley
caught sight of it--a great grayish-brown beast, lumbering along a
slope just ahead, and making for the top not far before. Sometimes he
was in the brush, sometimes in the open; but Charley knew him at once.

"Billy!" he cried, excited. "There's a bear! Shoot! Quick!"

"