past the million mark, and, if I had had sense enough to handle it
properly, would have made me worth several times that amount by the
time I reached middle age.

"But I don't know that I regret it now. I 'm as well off here with my
cats and dogs and burros as if they were so many mines and ranches and
railroads.

"I had a partner once, a fellow a little older than I, and not so
reckless and hare-brained, and together we had been sinking a prospect
hole that promised to be one of the best I ever struck. We had been at
work two or three months, and I was just as sure there was a big
fortune in that hole as I could be of anything. But I got tired of
staying in one place so long,--it was lonely and monotonous,--and I
wanted some excitement. So one evening I challenged him to play
seven-up for the mine, the loser to take his outfit and walk. He
refused and tried to argue me out of my crazy whim, but finally I
taunted him into it. I lost, and the next morning I packed up my
blankets and walked away. A month afterwards he sold the mine for a
hundred thousand dollars, and in less than a year its owners had
realized a round half million out of it.

"But the most exciting part of all those years was the time when I was
called 'Grizzly Dick.' I ought to be ashamed to tell anything about
that portion of my history; but it is all so long ago, and things have
changed so much since then, that it almost seems as if I were talking
about some other man.

"It all began at Grizzly Gulch, where a man named Johnson had taken a
strong dislike to me. I had played some joke on him which made him