"Then tell me where her claim is. It's quite rich, and you must know
it," says she, appealing to him.

Up against it? Say! I seen the whites of his eyes show like he was
drownding, and he grinned joyful as a man kicked in the stummick.

"Er--er--I just bought in here, and ain't acquainted much," says he.
"Have a drink," and, in his confusions, he sets out the bottle of
alkalies that he dignifies by the alias of booze. Then he continues
with reg'lar human intelligence.

"Bill, here, he can tell you where the ground is," and the whelp
indicates me.

Lord knows my finish, but for Ole Lund. He sits up in his bunk,
swaddled in Annie Black's bandages, and through slits between his
frost bites, he moults the follering rhetoric:

"Aye tole you vere de claim iss. She own de Nomber Twenty fraction
on Buster Creek, 'longside may and may broder. She's dam good
fraction, too."

I consider that a blamed white stunt for Swedes; paying for their
lives with the mine they swindled her out of.

Anyhow, it knocked us galley-west.

I'd formulated a swell climax, involving the discovery of the mother,
when the mail man spoke up, him that had been her particular