while--like as not you'll haf to have them took off. Lay still and
don't clutter up the cabin till Burt gits gone. I'll cook you somethin'
bimeby."

Sprudell writhed under the indifferent familiarity of his tone. He
wished old Griswold had a wife and ten small children and was on the pay
roll of the Bartlesville Tool Works some hard winter. He'd----Sprudell's
resentment found an outlet in devising a variety of situations conducive
to the disciplining of Uncle Bill.

Bruce finished his letter and re-read it, revising a little here and
there. He looked at Sprudell while he folded it reflectively, as though
he were weighing something pro and con.

Sprudell was conscious that he was being measured, and, egotist though
he was, he was equally aware that Bruce's observations still left him in
some doubt.

Bruce walked to the window undecidedly, and then seemed finally to make
up his mind.

"I'm going to ask you to do me a favor, stranger, but only in case I
don't come back. I intend to, but"--he glanced instinctively out of the
window--"it's no sure thing I will.

"My partner has a mother and a sister--here's the address, though it's
twelve years old. If anything happens to me, I want you to promise that
you'll hunt them up. Give them this old letter and the picture and this
letter, here, of mine. This is half the gold dust--our season's work."
He placed a heavy canvas sample sack in Sprudell's hand. "Say that Slim
sent it; that although they might not think it because he did not write,
that just the same he thought an awful lot of them.

"I've told them in my letter about the placer here--it's theirs, the
whole of it, if I don't come back. See that it's recorded; women don't
understand about such things. And be sure the assessment work's kept up.
In the letter, there, I've given them my figures as to how the samples
run. Some day there'll be found a way to work it on a big scale, and
it'll pay them to hold on. That's all, I guess." He looked deep into
Sprudell's eyes. "You'll do it?"

"As soon as I get out."

"I'd just about come back and haunt you if you lied."

There were no heroics when he left them; he simply fastened on his pack
and went.

"Don't try to hunt me if I stay too long," was all he said to Uncle Bill
at parting. "If there's any way of getting there, I can make it just as
well alone."

It was disappointing to Sprudell--nothing like the Western plays at
tragic moments; no long handshakes and hea