if he had he did not know for certain what ailed Injun Jim. He
thought it was just old age and general cussedness.

Injun Jim ate the jam, using a deadly looking knife and later his fingers,
when the jam got low in the jar. When he had finished that he opened the
can and drank the maple syrup just as he would have drunk whisky,--with a
relish. He smoked Casey's tobacco in the stone pipe which the squaw
brought him and appeared fairly well satisfied with life. But he did not
talk much, and what he did say was of no importance whatever. Not once did
he mention gold mines.

Casey went back to camp and swore at William as he counted his cans of
luxuries. He did not realize that he had established a dangerous
precedent, but when he led William up to water, meaning to pass by the
camp without stopping, the squaw halted him on his way back and told him
briefly that her man wanted him.

Injun Jim did not want Casey; he wanted more jam. Casey went back to camp
and got another can, this time of strawberry, and in a spirit of
peevishness added a small tin of the liver paste that had caused him a
night's discomfort. He took them to the tepee, and Injun Jim ate the
complete contents of both cans and seemed disgruntled afterwards; so much
so that he would not talk at all but smoked in brooding silence, staring
with his one malevolent eye at the stained wall of the tepee.

An hour later he began to move himself restlessly in the blanket and to
mutter Piute words, the full meaning of which Casey did not grasp. But he
would not answer when he was spoken to, so Casey went back to his camp.
And that night Injun Jim was very sick.

Next day however he was sufficiently recovered to want more jam. Casey
filled his pockets with small cans and doled them out one by one and
gossipped artfully while he watched Injun Jim eat pickles, India relish
and jelly with absolute, inscrutable impartiality. Casey felt sympathetic
qualms in his own stomach just from watching the performance, but he was
talking for a gold mine and he did not stop.

"You know Willow Pete?" he asked garrulously. "Big, tall man. Drinks
whisky all the time. Willow Pete found a gold mine two moons ago. He's
rich now. Got a big barrel of whisky. Got silk shirts like this--" he
plucked at his own silken sleeve "--got lots of jam all the time. Every
day drinks whisky and eats jam."

"Hunh!" Injun Jim ran his forefinger dexterously around the inside of a
jelly glass and licked