o kill a deer
or a buffalo soon, Jim."

"Not until we leave the valley. Now fall on, and when we finish the beef
we'll take another look at that map of yours."

They ate quickly and when they were done Will produced from an inside
pocket of his waistcoat, where he always carried it, the map which was
his most precious possession. It was on parchment, with all the lines
very distinct, and the two bent over it and studied it, as they had done
so often before.

It showed the Mississippi, flowing almost due south from Minnesota, and
the Missouri, which was in reality the upper Mississippi, thrusting its
mighty arm far out into the unknown wilderness of the Northwest. It
showed its formation by the meeting of the Jefferson, the Madison and
the Gallatin, but these three rivers themselves were indicated by vague
and faint traces. Extensive dark spaces meant high mountains.

"My father served in the northwest before the great Civil War," said
Will, telling it for the fiftieth time, "and he was a man of inquiring
mind. If he was in a country he always wished to know all about it that
was to be known, particularly if it happened to be a wild region. He had
the mind of a geographer and explorer, and the vast plains and huge
mountains up here fascinated him. If there was a chance to make a great
journey to treat with the Indians or to fight them he always took it."

"And he'd been in California in '49," said Boyd, saying, like Will, what
he had said fifty times before. "It was there I first met him, and a
fine, upstanding young officer he was."

The lad sighed, and for a moment or two his sorrow was so deep that it
gave him an actual thrill of physical pain.

"That's so, Jim. I've often heard him speak of the first time he saw
you," he resumed. "He was tempted to resign and hunt gold in California
with the crowd, and he did have some experience in the mines and
workings there, but he concluded, at last, to remain in the army, and
was finally sent into the Northwest with his command to deal with the
Indians."

"And it was on the longest of his journeys into the mountains that he
found it!"

"Yes. He noticed in a wild place among the ridges that the earth and
rock formations were like those of California where the richest gold
finds were made. He was alone at the time, though the rest of his
command was only a few miles away, but he picked among the rocks and saw
enough to prove that it was a mother lode, a great gold seam