ins. The
cowardly curs! They hit me from behind!" and again the eyes flamed with
anger. "They got the gold I had with me and they got me; but they did
not get the secret of Crooked Arm Gulch, nor learn how to find its
Golden Elbow. Curse them! If I could but live, I'd--But, what's the
use?" and he sank back white-lipped on the grass. "That knife stab in
the breast has done for me. And just when the golden key that unlocks
all the doors of pleasure and power was tight-gripped in my very
fingers! Just my luck! But," and the look of somber resignation came
back into the pain-racked eyes, "I'll not die like a snarling, whining
coyote. I'll meet death, as I have met life--face to face, with both
eyes wide open. Now," and he turned to Bud, who had hurried to his horse
and, unloosening the bear-skin, had hastened back with it and spread it
out on the grass, soft hair up, by the side of the wounded man, "lay me
on the skin and stuff something under my head and shoulders, so as to
keep the blood from flooding my lungs and heart as long as possible; for
I have that to tell that must not wait, even for death," and the white
lips tightened firmly.

Thure and Bud, anxious to do everything possible to ease the last
moments of the dying man, now carefully lifted him and laid him down on
the skin of the grizzly bear as gently as possible. Then, taking off one
of the saddles and their own coats, they placed the saddle, softened by
the folded coats and the bearskin, under the head and the shoulders of
the miner; and only the white tight-drawn lips and the burning eyes told
of the intense pain that he must have suffered while the change was
being made.

For a couple of minutes the wounded man lay silent on the bearskin, with
closed eyes, breathing heavily. Then he suddenly opened his eyes and
turned them resolutely on the two boys, who stood, one on each side,
bending anxiously over him.

"There, that is better," he said. "That is all you can do for me. Now,
sit down close to my head, so that you can hear every word that I say;
for never did dying lips have a more important message to utter, never
did mortal leave a richer inheritance to mortal than I am about to leave
to you. Gold--a cave paved with gold! Gold--a cave walled with seams of
gold! Gold--bushels, barrels of gold nuggets, to be picked up, as you
pick up pebbles from the stony bed of a river! Gods, if I could but
live!" Again the blood flushed back into the white cheeks and