r he does not see why he should not
spend his money to suit himself. And so he goes his own way, more than
satisfied with the knowledge that every man, woman and child in the
district counts Tom Connor as a friend.

The fate of those two poor ore-thieves was so horrible that I hesitate
to mention it. It was six months later that a prospector on one of the
northern spurs of Lincoln came upon two dead bodies. One, a club-footed
man, had been shot through the head; the other, unmistakably Long John,
was lying on his back, an empty revolver beside him, and one foot caught
in a bear-trap. Though the truth will never be known, the presumption is
that, setting the stolen trap in a deer run in the hope of catching a
deer, they had got into a quarrel; Clubfoot, striking at his companion,
had caused him to step backward into the trap, when, in his pain and
rage, Long John had whipped out his revolver and shot the other. What
his own fate must have been is too dreadful to contemplate.

And the Crawford ranch? Well, the Crawford ranch is the busiest place in
the county.

Peter, for whom my parents, like ourselves, took a great liking, quickly
thawed out under my mother's influence, and related to us briefly the
reason for his having taken to his solitary life. He had been a
school-teacher in Denver, but losing his wife and two children in an
accident, he had fled from the place and had hidden himself up in our
mountains, where for several years he had spent a lonely existence with
no company but old Socrates. Now, however, his house destroyed and his
mountain overrun with prospectors, he needed little inducement to
abandon his old hermit-life; and accepting gladly my father's suggestion
that he stay and work on the ranch, he built for himself a good log
cabin up near the waterfall, and there he and Socrates took up their
residence.

There was plenty of work for him and for all of us--indeed, for the
first two years there was almost more than we could do. It took that
length of time for the "forty rods" to drain off thoroughly, but by the
middle of the third summer we were cutting hay upon it; the ore wagons
from Sulphide and from the Big Reuben were passing through in a
continuous stream; the stage-coach was coming our way; the old hill road
was abandoned.

In fact, everybody is busy, and more than busy--with one single
exception.

The only loafer on the place is old Sox--tolerated on account of his
advanced age. That veter