elt the jab of his rider's spurs, he slewed around and backed toward
the table. Pierto saw the danger, and made a desperate rush to save his
nugget, but was just a second too late. Jimmy raised a yell to put his
pals on the watch, and spurred up the bronco, which at once sent his
heels into the air as high as the ceiling. Down went the table, and the
glass flew into a thousand pieces. The nugget went sailing over the
heads of the crowd and into the hands of one of the gang, who, in spite
of every effort that was made to stop him, succeeded in tossing it to
Jimmy; and Jimmy he headed for the door, riding over everybody that got
in his way. Then there was fun, I tell you. I never saw lead fly so
thickly before nor since. Everybody had a gun out, and Red Jimmy ought
by rights to have been riddled like a sieve."

"Uncle Ezra, did you shoot?" asked Ben.

"I presume to say that I made as much noise as the rest," answered the
old man, with a chuckle. "You know, I held some chances in that chunk,
and didn't want to lose them. Of course Pierto had to shell out the
money we paid him for the tickets, for the raffle could not now be
brought off; we kept him right there under our guns till he gave back
the last dollar, but he never set eyes on his nugget, and neither did
we. Red Jimmy, desperately wounded as he was, got away to the mountains
with his prize, and although a strong posse headed by the sheriff
followed on his trail and finished him the next day, they did not find
the nugget. One of his gang made off with it."

"And you lost it all?"

"Cer'n'y," said the old man.

"And never got a chance to raffle for any of it?" asked Ben. "It has
probably been fixed up into ornaments of some description by this time.
An article worth eight thousand dollars isn't going to be left around
loose."

"It wasn't so two years ago."

"Two years?"

"Wait till I tell you. That nugget has travelled as much as five hundred
miles from here, but somehow it always manages to come back. Here it was
born, and right here it is going to stay until it has its rights. Mind
you, that is Elam's way of looking at it, but it aint mine, by a long
shot. We didn't none of us hear of the nugget again for nearly a year,
and then one of the boys happened to strike a pardner who had got
dissatisfied with the money he was making and went off to Pike's Peak,
and there he learned that two of the gang who had stolen it were seen
and killed for the part they had