ome water, making a few tasteless pancakes with a
teacupful of flour.

Sprudell sat up suddenly and said, with savage energy:

"Look here--I'll give you a thousand dollars to get me out of this!"

Uncle Bill looked at him curiously. A thousand dollars! Wasn't that like
a dude? Dudes thought money could do anything, buy anything.

Uncle Bill would rather have had a sack of flour just then than all the
money Sprudell owned.

"Your check's no more good than a bunch of dried leaves. It's endurance
that's countin' from now on. We're up against it right, I tell you, with
Toy down sick and all."

Sprudell stared.

"Toy?" Was that why Griswold would not leave? "What's Toy got to do with
it?" he demanded.

It was the old man's turn to stare.

"What's Toy got to do with it?" He looked intently at Sprudell's small
round eyes--hard as agate--at his selfish, Cupid's mouth. "You don't
think I'd quit him, do you, when he's sick--leave him here to die
alone?" Griswold flopped a pancake in the skillet and added, in a
somewhat milder voice: "I've no special love for Chinks, but I've known
Toy since '79. He wouldn't pull out and leave me if I was down."

"But what about me?" Sprudell demanded furiously.

"You'll have to take your chances along with us. It may let up in a day
or two, and then again it mayn't. Anyway, the game goes; we stop eatin'
altogether before to-morry night."

"You got me into this fix! And what am I paying you five dollars a day
for, except to get me out and do as you are told?"

"_I_ got you into this fix? _I_ did?" The stove lids danced with the
vigor with which Uncle Bill banged down the frying pan. The mild old man
was stirred at last. "I sure like your nerve! And, say, when you talk to
me, jest try and remember that I don't wear brass buttons and a
uniform." His blue eyes blazed. "It's your infernal meanness that's to
blame, and nothin' else. I warned you--I told you half a dozen times
that you wasn't gittin' grub enough to come into the hills this time of
year. But you was so afraid of havin' six bits' worth left over that you
wouldn't listen to what I said. I don't like you anyhow. You're the
kind of galoot that ought never to git out of sight of a railroad. Now,
blast you--you starve!"

Incredible as the sensation was, Sprudell felt small. He had to remind
himself repeatedly who he was before he quite got back his poise, and no
suitable retort came to him, for his guide had told the truth. Bu