e different sort of night than this when I first heard
tell of the mine, which maybe you boys think you will find some trace
of, being young and hopeful and full of action."

"Now, Jeems, don't get personal," warned Jim. "We aren't as young as
we act."

"I know it, Skipper," admitted Jeems; "but as I was going to tell you,
this night I was speaking of, it had started in to snow something
fierce. I was young then myself, and had been prospectin' all day and
had come home to my little cabin that was under the shelter of a huge
ledge in the mid-Sierras.

"I can tell you, lads, I was mighty glad to be out of the storm that
night, and I pitied any poor prospector who might be caught out in it.
My cabin was smaller than the one I had on the Island off the coast,
where you first discovered me, but it was comfortable and warm, and
well sheltered from the wind.

"I had built a big stone fireplace in one corner of the cabin, and had
big sticks of pine piled up to the roof and a lot just outside of the
door. You know how pitch pine will burn."

"Needn't tell us," cried the audience in chorus.

"Besides wood, I had enough grub to stand a siege, as I was always
forehanded."

"Must have been durn lonesome," commented Jo. "Grub and firewood ain't
everything."

"That sort of business would just suit me," put in Juarez.

"Well, I wasn't entirely alone," said the shepherd.

"Wife with you?" cut in Tom, who could be over-smart at times. Jim
noticed that the shepherd winced at the careless question, and he put
a grip on Tom's knee that meant that the said Tom had better keep his
mouth shut.

"A man don't take his wife into such a wilderness as that," said Jim.

"Go on, Jeems, and there won't be any more personal interruptions."

"Well, Skipper, as I was agoin' to say, I had with me a big hound,
one that had followed me on my trips ever since he was a puppy. A
prospector had given him to me when I was sluicing for gold on Rainbow
Creek. He was a smooth, black-skinned dog, with stubby ears, and a jaw
on him like a prize fighter. He was equal to anything in a fight short
of a grizzly, and I valued his company considerable, I can tell you."

"I should like to have seen a scrap between him and Captain Graves'
Santa Anna." (This was on the back trail when the Frontier Boys were
in Colorado), said Juarez.

"Get Jo and Tom to mixing it," laughed Jim, "and you'll have some idea
of what it would be like."

At this point the boys