se pretty little playthings
first."

The nuggets were divided into two stout canvas sacks, which were never
to leave the lynx eyes of these three adventurers. They were to eat off
those sacks, sleep on them, sit on them, think of them, dream of them,
work for them, swim for them, fight for them. That was the vow that
these three sturdy souls and manly hearts made one to another, before
they sat down to bacon and beans, in the vast wilderness of the North,
that glorious summer night.

"Downy pillow, this!" growled Larry, as he folded his sweater over a
gold sack to get at least a semblance of softness for his ear to burrow
into.

"Never mind, Larry, you can swap it for a good slice of 'down' when
we get to the front," said Jack from the depths of his blankets. "It
strikes me that it will be the cause of your sleeping on 'down' for
the rest of your life."

"I shall never sleep or rest for long, son, nor do I want a downy life,
but there is a difference between rose leaves and these bulky nuggets
prodding a fellow in the neck."

"You sleep on blankets, I sleep on the wampum," said Fox-Foot,
extracting with his slim brown fingers the "pillow" from beneath
Larry's tired head.

"All right, Foxy," murmured the man, sleepily. "The gold only goes to
itself when it goes to you. You're gold right through and through.
Good-night."

"Good-night," came Jack's voice.

"How," answered the Chippewa, after the quaint custom of his tribe.

IV

And all night long they slept the hours peacefully away, the strong,
athletic, well-knit, muscular white boy, the slender, agile, adroit
Indian side by side, their firm young cheeks pillowed on thousands and
thousands of dollars' worth of yellow gold.

With the first hint of dawn, Fox-Foot was astir. Before he left the
tent, however, he cautiously placed his sack under Larry's blanket, and
within the turn of that gentleman's elbow. Once more good luck attended
his efforts with rod and line, and he got a dozen trout in almost as
many minutes. Larry's nose usually awakened him when it sniffed early
cooking, so now he rolled over to pummel Jack, then up to sing and
whistle through his morning toilet like a schoolboy. Breakfast over,
they struck camp, Fox-Foot taking command in packing the canoe, giving
most rigid instructions as to saving the sacks should there be an upset.
Larry took one long, last look at the wild surroundings. The dense pine
forest, the forbidding rocks, the silver