Cash bought flour and bacon and beans and coffee, and added other
things quite as desirable but not so necessary. Then they too
went away into the hills.

Fifteen miles from Alpine, as a cannon would shoot; high up in
the hills, where a creek flowed down through a saucerlike basin
under beetling ledges fringed all around with forest, they came,
after much wandering, upon an old log cabin whose dirt roof still
held in spite of the snows that heaped upon it through many a
winter. The ledge showed the scars of old prospect holes, and in
the sand of the creek they found "colors" strong enough to make
it seem worth while to stop here--for awhile, at least.

They cleaned out the cabin and took possession of it, and the
next time they went to town Cash made cautious inquiries about
the place. It was, he learned, an old abandoned claim. Abandoned
chiefly because the old miner who had lived there died one day,
and left behind him all the marks of having died from starvation,
mostly. A cursory examination of his few belongings had revealed
much want, but no gold save a little coarse dust in a small
bottle.

"About enough to fill a rifle ca'tridge," detailed the teller
of the tale. "He'd pecked around that draw for two, three year
mebby. Never showed no gold much, for all the time he spent
there. Trapped some in winter--coyotes and bobcats and skunks,
mostly. Kinda off in the upper story, old Nelson was. I guess he
just stayed there because he happened to light there and didn't
have gumption enough to git out. Hills is full of old fellers
like him. They live off to the'rselves, and peck around and git a