t the
thought that blanched his pink face until it was only a shade less white
than his thick, white hair was that he, T. Victor Sprudell, president of
the Bartlesville Tool Works, of Bartlesville, Indiana, was going to
starve! To freeze! To die in the pitiless hills like any penniless
prospector! His check-book was as useless as a bent weapon in his hand,
and his importance in the world counted for no more than that of the
Chinaman, by his side. Mr. Sprudell lay down again, weak from an
overwhelming sense of helplessness.

Sprudell had not realized it before; but now he knew that always in the
back of his head there had been a picture of an imposing cortege, blocks
long, following a wreath-covered coffin in which he reposed. And later,
an afternoon extra in which his demise was featured and his delicate,
unostentatious charities described--not that he could think of any, but
he presumed that that was the usual thing.

But this--this miserable finality! Unconsciously Sprudell groaned. To
die bravely in the sight of a crowd was sublime; but to perish alone,
unnoted, side by side with the Chinese cook and chiefly for want of
trousers in which to escape, was ignominious. He snatched his cold feet
from the middle of the cook's back.

Another wretched day passed, the event of which was the uncovering of
Sprudell's fine field boots in a drift outside. That night he did not
close his eyes. His nervousness became panic, and his panic like unto
hysteria. He ached with cold and his cramped position, and he was now
getting in earnest the gnawing pangs of hunger. What was a Chinaman's
life compared to his? There were millions like him left--and there was
only one Sprudell! In the faint, gray light of the fourth day, Griswold
felt him crawling out.

Griswold watched him while he kneaded the hard leather of his boots to
soften it, and listened to the chattering of his teeth while he went
through the Chinaman's war bag for an extra pair of socks.

"The sizes in them Levi Strauss' allus run too small," Uncle Bill
observed suddenly, after Sprudell had squeezed into Toy's one pair of
overalls.

"There's no sense in us all staying here to starve," said Sprudell
defiantly, as though he had been accused. "I'm going to Ore City before
I get too weak to start."

"I won't stop you if you're set on goin'; but, as I told you once,
you'll be lost in fifteen yards. There's just one chance I see,
Sprudell, and I'll take it if you'll say yo