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Title: The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch

Author: Henry Wallace Phillips

Release Date: June 16, 2008 [eBook #25809]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH

by

HENRY WALLACE PHILLIPS

Author of Red Saunders
Plain Mary Smith
etc.

With Illustrations by F. Graham Cootes

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

Copyright 1908
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
October

THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH

THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH

The gulch ran in a trough of beauty to the foot of Jones's Hill, which
rose in a sweeping curve into the clouds.

Wild flowers, trees in profuse leaf, and mats of vines covered the
scarred earth, and the sky was as limpid as spring water; the air carried
a weight of heart-stirring odors, yet Jim Felton, sitting on the
door-step of his cabin in the brilliant sunshine, was not a happy man.

He looked at the hollow of the gulch and cursed it manfully and bitterly.
The gold should be there--Jim had figured it all out. The old wash cut at
right angles to the creek, and at the turn was where its freight of
yellow metal should have been deposited, but when you got down to the
bed-rock, the blasted stuff was either slanted so nothing could stay on
it, or was rotten--crumbling in your fingers, and that kind of bed will
hold nothing.

Therefore Jim had sunk about fifty prospect holes; got colors under the
grass-roots, as evidence that pay should be there--and nothing but ashy
wash beneath it.

When a man is alone, an