rom his belt and scraped at the yellow. Where the
yellow was thickest it could--yes, it could be scraped in tiny
shavings. Billy was peering close; and he was breathing so fast that,
Charley afterward declared, he could be heard half a mile. But no
matter now.

"It's gold!" Charley's voice came tense and stammery. "Anyway, it's
soft."

"Do you suppose the whole rock's full of gold?"

"Maybe. Let's knock off some more. Maybe the whole hill's full of
gold--all the rock! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah! Maybe it'll get solider, deeper we go," cheered Billy,
hopefully.

Charley hammered with his boot heel and pried with his knife; Billy
hammered with his rifle-butt; and when they knocked off even a chip, it
showed traces of gold. Why, wherever the rock stuck up, making little
humps and furrows, it seemed to be the one kind: quartz-blotched and
yellow-spotted.

"Hurrah!" again cheered Charley. "We ought to stake off claims. Who
found it? I saw the bear."

"And I shot the bullet," returned Billy.

"Well, there's enough for all, anyway. It'll belong to the whole
party. What'll we call it? Grizzly? Lucky Bullet?"

They were so busy searching and gloating that they had forgotten the
pack animals below and even the whereabouts of the men of the party.
On a sudden, as if replying to Charley's queries, Billy cried out
excitedly:

"Somebody else has been up here! Here's a little pile of loose rock,
and a stake with a board sign on it, that says----shucks. Can't quite
make it out. Come on and help me."

Over scrambled Charley, to where Billy was crouching and peering at a
weathered board set up in a shallow hollow. Billy's voice rang
triumphantly.

"'Golden West,' it says. 'Golden West Mine.' And----'I lay claim to
as much of this lode running east and west as is allowed by miners'
law. Tom Jones. August 22, 1848.'"

"Golden West!" exclaimed Charley, crashing and sliding to Billy's side.
"Hurrah! That's the mine we've been looking for, Billy! It's our
mine. It's the one----"

"That's where you're mistaken, bub," interrupted a new voice, speaking
cold and distinctly. "Now you pile out of there, and git! Don't come
back again, either."

Looking up, startled (as did Billy likewise), Charley faced the
long-nosed man and his two companions gazing in upon them, over the
brushy rim of the hollow and the muzzles of three guns.

XXI

MINERS' JUSTICE

"No talk, now," continued the long-nosed man,