back. The loaded car being emptied, and the empty car being loaded with
more ore, the performance could be repeated--a performance which had
been repeated tens of thousands of times since the day Old Jerry became
the keeper of the cables.

Young Jerry broke off his song at the sound of approaching footsteps. A
tall, blue-shirted man, a rifle across the hollow of his arm, came out
from the gloom of the pine-trees. It was Hall, watchman of the Yellow
Dragon mine, the cables of which spanned the Sacramento a mile farther
up.

"Yello, younker!" was his greeting. "What you doin' here by your
lonesome?"

"Oh, bachin'," Jerry tried to answer unconcernedly, as if it were a very
ordinary sort of thing. "Dad's away, you see."

"Where's he gone?" the man asked.

"San Francisco. Went last night. His brother's dead in the old country,
and he's gone down to see the lawyers. Won't be back till tomorrow
night."

So spoke Jerry, and with pride, because of the responsibility which had
fallen to him of keeping an eye on the property of the Yellow Dream, and
the glorious adventure of living alone on the cliff above the river and
of cooking his own meals.

"Well, take care of yourself," Hall said, "and don't monkey with the
cables. I'm goin' to see if I can pick up a deer in the Cripple Cow