pocket now and then that keeps 'm in grub and tobacco. If you
want to use the cabin, I guess nobody's goin' to care. Nelson
never had any folks, that anybody knows of. Nobody ever bothered
about takin' up the claim after he cashed in, either. Didn't seem
worth nothin' much. Went back to the gov'ment."

"Trapped, you say. Any game around there now?"

"Oh, shore! Game everywhere in these hills, from weasels up to
bear and mountain lion. If you want to trap, that's as good a
place as any, I guess."

So Cash and Bud sold the burros and bought traps and more
supplies, and two window sashes and a crosscut saw and some
wedges and a double-bitted axe, and settled down in Nelson Flat
to find what old Dame Fortune had tucked away in this little side
pocket and forgotten.



CHAPTER NINE. THE BITE OF MEMORY

The heavy boom of a dynamite blast rolled across the fiat to
the hills that flung it back in a tardy echo like a spent ball of
sound. A blob of blue smoke curled out of a hole the size of a
hogshead in a steep bank overhung with alders. Outside, the wind
caught the smoke and carried streamers of it away to play with. A
startled bluejay, on a limb high up on the bank, lifted his slaty
crest and teetered forward, clinging with his toe nails to the
branch while he scolded down at the men who had scared him so. A