time for us to be mounting and getting back. I have got to see that the
dinner is all ready. I never can trust that black scoundrel, Sam, to do
things right while I am away."

The preparations for the journey were completed by the evening.

"Now mind, Tom," Pete Hoskings said the last thing before going to bed,
"if you don't find your uncle, or if you hear that he has got wiped out,
be sure you come right back here. Whether you are cut out for a hunter
or not, it will do you a world of good to stick to the life until you
get four or five years older and settle as to how you like to fix
yourself, for there ain't no better training than a few years out on the
plains, no matter what you do afterwards. I will find a good chum for
you, and see you through it, both for the sake of my old mate, Straight
Harry, and because I have taken a liking to you myself."

"Why do you call my uncle Straight Harry?" Tom asked, after thanking
Pete for his promise. "Is he so very upright?"

"No, lad, no; it ain't nothing to do with that. There are plenty more
erect men than him about. He is about the size of Jerry, though, maybe a
bit taller. No; he got to be called Straight Harry because he was a
square man, a chap everyone could trust. If he said he would do a thing
he would do it; there weren't no occasion for any papers to bind him.
When he said a thing you could bet on it. You could buy a mine on his
word: if he said it was good you need not bother to take a journey to
look at it, you knew it was right there, and weren't a put-up job. Once
when we were working down on the Yuba we got to a place where there were
a fault in the rock, and the lode had slipped right away from us.
Everyone in camp knew that we had been doing well, and we had only got