k. They've got some picked rock on the dump."

"Why don't you quit that dead work and do a little chloriding yourself?
Pound out a little gold--that's the way to get a stake!"

Old Hassayamp spat the words out impatiently, but Rimrock seemed hardly
to hear.

"Nope," he said, "no pocket-mining for me. There's copper there,
millions of tons of it. I'll make my winning yet."

"Huh!" grunted Hassayamp, and Rimrock came out of his trance.

"You don't think so, hey?" he challenged and then his face softened to
a slow, reminiscent smile.

"Say, Hassayamp," he said, "did you ever hear about that prospector
that found a thousand pounds of gold in one chunk? He was lost on the
desert, plumb out of water and forty miles from nowhere. He couldn't
take the chunk along with him and if he left it there the sand would
cover it up. Now what was that poor feller to do?"

"Well, what did he do?" enquired Hassayamp cautiously.

"He couldn't make up his mind," answered Rimrock, "so he stayed there
till he starved to death."

"You're plumb full of these sayings and parables, ain't you?" remarked
Hassayamp sarcastically. "What's that got to do with the case?"

"Well," began Rimrock, sitting down on the edge of the sidewalk and
looking absently up the street, "take me, for instance. I go out
across the desert to the Tecolotes and find a whole mountain of copper.
You don't have to chop it out with chisels, like that native copper
around the Great Lakes; and you don't have to go underground and do
timbering like they do around Bisbee and Cananea. All you have to do
is to shoot it down and scoop it up with a steam shovel. Now I've
located the whole danged mountain and done most of my discovery work,
but if some feller don't give me a boost, like taking that prospector a
canteen of water, I've either got to lose my mine or sit down and
starve to death. If I'd never done anything, it'd be different, but
you know that I _made_ the Gunsight."

He leaned forward and fixed the saloon keeper with his earnest eyes and
Old Hassayamp held up both hands.

"Yes, yes, boy, I know!" he broke out hurriedly. "Don't talk to
me--I'm convinced. But by George, Rim, you can spend more money and
have less to show for it than any man I know. What's the use? That's
what we all say. What's the use of staking you when you'll turn right
around in front of us and throw the money away? Ain't I staked you?
Ain't L. W. staked you?"

"Yes! And