of the Indian's genius
for nomenclature. Another thing mentioned by Dunkie, which has stuck in
my memory, was his running across a papoose's grave in an Indian
burying-ground at Pincer Creek, when he was surveying, where the Indian
baby had been buried--above-ground, of course--_in an old Saratoga
trunk_. That served to remind me of Francois' story about "Old Sun," who
preceded "Running Rabbit"--note the name--as chief of the Alberta
Blackfoot tribe, and always carried among his souvenirs of conquest a
beautiful white scalp, with hair of the purest gold, very long and fine,
but would never reveal how or where he got it. Many a night, when I
couldn't sleep, I've worried about that white scalp, and dramatized
the circumstances of its gathering. Who was the girl with the long and
lovely tresses of purest gold? And did she die bravely? And did she
meet death honorably and decently, or after the manner of certain of
the Jesuits' _Relations_?...

I have had a talk with Whinnie, otherwise Whinstane Sandy, who has
been ditching at the far end of our half-section. I explained the
situation to him quite openly, acknowledging that we were on the rocks
but not yet wrecked, and pointing out that there might be a few months
before the ghost could walk again. And Whinstane Sandy has promised to
stick. Poor old Whinnie not only promised to stick, but volunteered
that if he could get over to Seattle or 'Frisco and raise some money
on his Klondike claim our troubles would be a thing of the past. For
Whinnie, who is an old-time miner and stampeder, is, I'm afraid, a wee
bit gone in the upper story. He dreams he has a claim up North where
there's millions and millions in gold to be dug out. On his moose-hide
watch-guard he wears a nugget almost half as big as a praline, a
nugget he found himself in ninety-nine, and he'd part with his life, I
believe, before he'd part with that bangle of shiny yellow metal. In
his chest of black-oak, too, he keeps a package of greasy and
dog-eared documents, and some day, he proclaims, those papers will
bring him into millions of money.

I asked Dinky-Dunk about the nugget, and he says it's genuine gold,
without a doubt. He also says there's one chance in a hundred of
Whinnie actually having a claim up in the gold country, but doubts if
the poor old fellow will ever get up to it again. It's about on the
same footing, apparently, as Uncle Carlton's Chilean nitrate mines. For
Whinnie had a foot frozen, his