o his
beloved mountains and the life of his slow deep delight and his pecking
away before the open doors of fortune. By and by he would build
himself a little cabin down in the lower pine mountains, where he would
grow a white beard, putter with occult wilderness crafts, and smoke
long contemplative hours in the sun before his door. For tourists he
would braid rawhide reins and quirts, or make buckskin. The jays and
woodpeckers and Douglas squirrels would become fond of him. So he
would be gathered to his fathers, a gentle old man whose life had been
spent harmlessly in the open. He had had his ideal to which blindly he
reached; he had in his indirect way contributed the fruits of his labor
to mankind; his recompenses he had chosen according to his desires.
When you consider these things, you perforce have to revise your first
notion of him as a useless sort of old ruffian. As you come to know
him better, you must love him for the kindliness, the simple honesty,
the modesty, and charity that he seems to draw from his mountain
environment. There are hundreds of him buried in the great canons of
the West.

Our prospector was a little uncertain as to his plans. Along toward
autumn he intended to land at some reputed placers near Dinkey Creek.
There might be something in that district. He thought he would take a
look. In the mean time he was just poking up through the country--he
and his jackasses. Good way to spend the summer. Perhaps he might run
across something 'most anywhere; up near the top of that mountain
opposite looked mineralized. Didn't know but what he'd take a look at
her to-morrow.

He camped near us during three days. I never saw a more modest,
self-effacing man. He seemed genuinely, childishly, almost helplessly
interested in our fly-fishing, shooting, our bear-skins, and our
travels. You would have thought from his demeanor--which was sincere
and not in the least ironical--that he had never seen or heard anything
quite like that before, and was struck with wonder at it. Yet he had
cast flies before we were born, and shot even earlier than he had cast
a fly, and was a very Ishmael for travel. Rarely could you get an
account of his own experiences, and then only in illustration of
something else.

"If you-all likes bear-hunting," said he, "you ought to get up in
eastern Oregon. I summered there once. The only trouble is, the brush
is thick as hair. You 'most always have to bait them,