member; but I'll get
the start of all of them, you see if I don't."

Elam began to look wild when he began to talk about the nugget, and Tom
was glad to change the subject of the conversation.

"Who is the other fellow?" said he. "You said there were two of them."

"The other fellow is a tender-foot; he don't claim to be anything else.
I'll bet you, now that I have got over my excitement, that I have been
talking about his father. His father commands a post within forty miles
of the place where he is now visiting, but I don't know one soldier from
another. They all look alike to me, and I didn't think of the
relationship they bore to each other. No matter; he treated me mighty
shabby, and I shall always think hard of soldiers after that."

At the end of half an hour they came out of the scrub oaks and found
themselves in front of a neat little cabin which reminded Tom of the
negro quarters he had seen in Mississippi. There were two boys standing
in front of the cabin, and Tom had no trouble in picking out Carlos
Burton. There was an independent air about him that somehow did not
belong to the tender-foot, and when Elam introduced him in his off-hand
way, this boy was the first to welcome him.

"This fellow is Tom Mason, and I want you to know him and treat him
right. He got into a little trouble down in Mississippi where he used to
live, and came out here to get clear of it. Know him, boys."

The boys, surprised as they were, were glad to shake hands with Tom,
because he was Elam's friend; but they were still more anxious to know
how Elam had come among them for the fourth time robbed of his furs, and
what he had to say about it. There were some things about him that
didn't look exactly right. There was his hand, which was still done up
the way the doctor left it, and the mark on his horse's neck, both of
which proclaimed that Elam had been in something of a fight; but they
didn't push him, for they knew they would hear the whole of his story
when he got inside of the cabin.

What I have written here is the true history of what happened to Tom
Mason after he gave Joe Coleman the valise, containing the five thousand
dollars, and the double-barrel shotgun; and I have told the truth, too,
in regard to Elam and his last attempt at grub-staking. It took him
pretty near all day to finish the story, and now I can drop the third
person and go on with my narrative just as it happened. Of course we
were all amazed at what