, and, leading one of his well-loaded pack-horses on either
side of him, he strode off, headed for the rough trail to Hangtown,
followed by Thure and Bud, driving their pack-horses before them.

As they passed along by the various camps in the outskirts of the town,
a man, holding a long-handled frying-pan over the coals of his
camp-fire, looked up and then remarked casually:

"Queer shootin' scrap that down on the levee last night!"

"Heer'd th' shootin', but that's all I heer'd," answered Ham, halting
for a moment. "What might thar be queer 'bout it?"

"Both on 'em bosum friends 'til they gits a lot of French Ike's whiskey
down 'em. Then one calls t'other a liar, an' both on 'em pulls their
guns an' shoots; an' both on 'em falls dead, th' bullets goin' through
th' heart of each one on 'em," answered the man.

"Hump! Nuthin' queer 'bout that!" grunted Ham. "That's a common thing
for whiskey tew dew. Git up!" and he continued on his way.

The trail to Hangtown, after leaving the Sacramento Valley, entered the
rough and picturesque regions of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, where the traveling was slow and difficult, especially with
heavily loaded pack-horses; and, although the distance from Sacramento
City, as the crow flies, was scarcely more than forty miles, yet it was
not until near the middle of the afternoon of the third day that our
friends came in sight of the rude log cabins and tents of Hangtown. They
had climbed to the summit of a particularly rough hill and had just
rounded a huge pile of rocks, when Ham brought his pack-horses to a
sudden halt.

"Thar's Hangtown," he said, and pointed down the steep side of the hill
into what was little more than a wide ravine, where a number of rudely
built log houses and dirty-looking tents lay scattered along the sides
and the bottom of the declivity and men could be seen at work with picks
and shovels, digging up the hard stony ground, or, with gold-pans in
their hands, washing the dirt thus dug in the waters of the little creek
that flowed through the bottom of the ravine.

"Hurrah!" yelled both boys, taking off their hats and swinging them
around their heads the moment their eyes caught sight of the houses and
the tents.

"At last we are where gold is being actually dug up out of the ground!"
exclaimed Thure enthusiastically, a moment later, as he sat on the back
of his horse, watching, with glowing face and eyes, the men of the pick
and t