ed the summit.

It was all his own! His own by right of discovery under the law of the
land, and without accepting a favor from _them_. He recalled even the
fact that it was _his_ prospecting on the mountain that first suggested
the existence of gold in the outcrop and the use of the hydraulic. _He_
had never abandoned that belief, whatever the others had done. He dwelt
somewhat indignantly to himself on this circumstance, and half
unconsciously faced defiantly towards the plain below. But it was
sleeping peacefully in the full sight of the moon, without life or
motion. He looked at the stars, it was still far from midnight. His
companions had no doubt long since returned to the cabin to prepare for
their midnight journey. They were discussing him, perhaps laughing at
him, or worse, pitying him and his bargain. Yet here was his bargain! A
slight laugh he gave vent to here startled him a little, it sounded so
hard and so unmirthful, and so unlike, as he oddly fancied what he
really _thought_. But _what_ did he think?

Nothing mean or revengeful; no, they never would say _that_. When he
had taken out all the surface gold and put the mine in working order,
he would send them each a draft for a thousand dollars. Of course, if
they were ever ill or poor he would do more. One of the first, the very
first things he should do would be to send them each a handsome gun and
tell them that he only asked in return the old-fashioned rifle that
once was his. Looking back at the moment in after-years, he wondered
that, with this exception, he made no plans for his own future, or the
way he should dispose of his newly acquired wealth. This was the more
singular as it had been the custom of the five partners to lie awake at
night, audibly comparing with each other what they would do in case
they made a strike. He remembered how, Alnaschar-like, they nearly
separated once over a difference in the disposal of a hundred thousand
dollars that they never had, nor expected to have. He remembered how
Union Mills always began his career as a millionaire by a "square meal"
at Delmonico's; how the Right Bower's initial step was always a trip
home "to see his mother;" how the Left Bower would immediately placate
the parents of his beloved with priceless gifts (it may be
parenthetically remarked that the parents and the beloved one were as
hypothetical as the fortune); and how the Judge would make his first
start as a capitalist by breaking a certa