the judge who drove home in his coach
through a shallow creek. Ruin faced him for the lack of a few thousand
dollars. He took out his derringer and shot himself.

Not half an hour later a Chinaman crossed the creek under his pole
between two swinging baskets. He found a nugget there which brought him
over $30,000.

This, then, is the tale of what Fortune did to Curly Gillmore.

* * * * *

"Whoop-ee! Ki-yi-ee hick-ee! Yi-ee-ee!"

"There comes Curly," said Teddy Karns, "never altering the steady flow
of the whiskey he was pouring into a tin cup for Sailor Jack to drink.

"Made a big strike, I hear."

"Yea-ah. About $25,000, they say. Might be a million, the way the female
critters run," Ted laughed, as the hurdy-gurdy girls with shrieks of
laughter pounced upon the noisy newcomer.

"Well, hel-lo, Nance, and Liz, and Babe, and Bouncin' Bet, old gal! All
ready to help me sling it, ain't you? But where's little pale Alice?"

"Oh, Allie? She's back in the tents. Sick tonight. Awful bad, she's
took. She'll be shufflin' off 'fore long, an' rid o' mortal misery."

"Poor little soldier!"

"Sweet, she was, an' born to be good. Why, I remember (we came 'round
the Horn on the same sailin' vessel) that they wasn't a ailin' baby on
board but what Allie could get a smile out of it, nor a sick soul that
didn't bless 'er for 'er kindness an' care. Sick o' body, sick o' heart,
Allie did for 'em all, bless 'er."

"She was happy, then," put in Babe.

"Yes. Comin' out to Californy to 'er lover, she were, all her folks back
in the States bein' dead. She'd took care of 'er mother, last. 'Twas why
'er man came on ahead. An' when she got here--"

"Aw-w, Bet, don't you cry," said Babe. "Y' see, when we got here, Curly,
we found her boy'd been shot in a fight over a mine. Allie, she hadn't
no money left, and no gumption much, like Bet an' me, to fight her way,
so we took 'er along o' us. We tried to keep her the little lady that
she was, but--Well, we got snowed in last winter up on the divide
an'--Faro Sam--Well, it broke her pure heart, an' most Bet's an' mine,
too. An' she ain't never got over the cold she took, up there in the
snow."

"Life's hard for a girl anyways you put it, an' she'll be happier over
the river where there ain't no cold nor sorrer. Bet! Aw-w, she'll
sleep on a finer bed nor you an' I could give 'er, an' wake happy, with
ever'one she loved best around her. She's layin' there so white an'
small an' still i