d I
wouldn't be much in the way, would I?"

"No, I am all alone," said Welborn trying as best he could to answer
the many questions. "I have no family and I do have a shack that is
very comfortable. It has a fireplace and a stove. I have plenty of
blankets and wood and grub. But what about sickness--home-sickness!
What about the terrors of loneliness that sometimes drive people mad!
The wide open spaces have their handicaps, as I well know. For a year
or more I have had just that experience. I have suffered, along with
the joys of being wholly alone. Truly, I went into it with a bigger
aversion to human society than you have, and I have not escaped.

"Yes, I have a shack, a good one, and a few score acres, but it's not
a ranch. It's not stocked, has no barn or stables, and no crop but the
native grass. It was a dreamer's plaything and I bought it with scant
savings that should have been spent on another project. But it looked
like I just had to own it in order to carry on."

"What's your other project?" asked Davy, curious to know why a man
with a ranch would not be ranching.

"Mining," replied Welborn. "Placer mining back in a canyon or gulch
that never felt a human footfall before I stumbled into it. It's a
limited thing--limited to this ravine that is not more than fifty feet
wide and a half a mile long. It was probably the old stream bed back
before the Tertiary ages, but when the troubled mountain took another
surge, it was left high and dry, twenty feet above water. I was
working it this summer but the little bear cubs took most of my time.
It takes a full day to lug enough water up to the canyon levels to
wash out a pan of gravel. It takes the big part of the day to lower a
sack of gravel down to the water, but at that, I have made wages. Now,
I have an old rocker that was abandoned in the stream bed, but I need
a pump so I can use the rocker right on the gravel bar. As it is a
one-man job, it should be a force pump with a gasoline engine. All
this costs money and it takes a long time to pan out enough dust to
pay the bill. Really I had the money, but I just had to spend it in
buying the cabin and land that was the only entrance to the placer
bed. I just couldn't work the one without owning the other. Then too,
I will have to blast a hole in the rock wall to get the pump located,
after that, one year is all I want. One year's work will clean up all
that one man ought to have. Of course I have practically lost