as a dirty deal, but you better forget it."

"I'll try," the girl promised. "But I don't forget easily."

Laughing Bill's rejection of Ponatah's offer of marriage did not in
the least affect their friendly relations. She continued to visit the
cabin, and not infrequently she reverted to the forbidden topic, only
to meet with discouragement.

Doctor Thomas had opened an office, of course, but business was light
and expenses heavy. Supplies were low in Nome and prices high; coal,
for instance, was a hundred dollars a ton and, as a result, most
of the idle citizens spent their evenings---but precious little
else--around the saloon stoves. When April came Laughing Bill
regretfully decided that it was necessary for him to go to work. The
prospect was depressing, and he did not easily reconcile himself to
it, for he would have infinitely preferred some less degraded and
humiliating way out of the difficulty. He put up a desperate battle
against the necessity, and he did not accept the inevitable until
thoroughly convinced that the practice of medicine and burglary could
not be carried on from the same residence without the risk of serious
embarrassment to his benefactor.

However, to find employment in a community where there were two men to
one job was not easy, but happily--or unhappily--Bill had a smattering
of many trades, and eventually there came an opening as handy-man at a
mine. It was a lowly position, and Bill had little pride in it, for
he was put to helping the cook, waiting on table, washing dishes,
sweeping cabins, making beds, and the like. He had been assured that
the work was light, and so it was, but it was also continuous. He
could summon not the slightest interest in it until he discovered that
this was the very claim which rightfully belonged to Ponatah. Then,
indeed, he pricked up his ears.

The Aurora Borealis, as the mine was now called, had been working all
winter, and gigantic dumps of red pay-dirt stood as monuments to the
industry of its workmen. Rumor had it that the "streak" was rich, and
that Doctor Slayforth, the owner, would be in on the first boat to
personally oversee the clean-ups. The ex-missionary, Bill discovered,
had the reputation of being a tight man, and meanly suspicious in
money matters. He reposed no confidence in his superintendent, a
surly, saturnine fellow known as Black Jack Berg, nor in Denny Slevin,
his foreman. So much Laughing Bill gathered from camp gossip.

It soo