in broken
accents.

"Where'd you git that rock?" he asked, looking up, and Wunpost threw out
his chest.

"Right there at Black Point," he answered carelessly, "you've been
chasing along by it for years."

"I don't believe it!" burst out Dusty gazing wildly about and mumbling
still louder in the interim. "It ain't possible--I've been right by
there!"

"But perhaps you never stopped," suggested Wunpost sarcastically and
handed the piece of rock to Mrs. Campbell.

"Look in them holes," he directed, "they're full of fine gold." And then
he turned to Dusty.

"No, Mr. Rhodes," he said, "you ain't treated me right or I'd let you in
on this strike. But you went off and left me and therefore you're out of
it, and there ain't any extensions to stake. It's just a single big
blow-out, an eroded volcanic cone, and I've covered it all with one
claim."

"But you was _traveling_ with me!" yelled Rhodes dancing about like
a jay-bird, "you gimme half or I'll have the law on ye!"

"Hop to it!" invited Wunpost, "nothing would please me better than to
air this whole case in court. And I'll bet, when I've finished, they'll
take you out of court and hang you to the first tree they find. I'll
just tell them the facts, how you went off and left me and refused to
either stop or leave me water; and then I'll tell the judge how this
little girl came down and saved my life with her mule. I'm not trying to
play the hog--all I want is half the claim--but the other half goes to
Billy. Here's the paper, Wilhelmina; I may not know how to spell but you
bet your life I know who's my friend!"

He handed over a piece of the paper bag which had been used to wrap up
his lunch, and as Wilhelmina looked she beheld a copy of the notice that
he had posted on his claim. No knight errant of old could have excelled
him in gallantry, for he had given her a full half of his claim; but her
eyes filled with tears, for here, even as at Wunpost, he had betrayed
his ineptitude with the pen. He had named the mine after her but he had
spelled it "Willie Meena" and she knew that his detractors would laugh.
Yet she folded the precious paper and thanked him shyly as he told her
how to have it recorded, and then she slipped away to gloat over it
alone and look through the specimen for gold.

But Dusty Rhodes, though he had been silenced for the moment, was not
satisfied with the way things had gone; and while Billy was making a
change to her Sunday clothes she hea