minority, all right,--but, by cripes! it's because I know how to be
rich and still enjoy all the little comforts of poverty!"




CHAPTER III.

Billy Brue Finds His Man


Each spring the old man grew restive and raw like an unbroken colt. And
when the distant mountain peaks began to swim in their summer haze, and
the little rushing rivers sang to him, pleading that he come once more
to follow them up, he became uncontrollable. Every year at this time he
alleged, with a show of irritation, that his health was being sapped by
the pernicious indulgence of sleeping on a bed inside a house. He
alleged, further, that stocks and bonds were but shadows of wealth,
that the old mines might any day become exhausted, and that security
for the future lay only in having one member of the family, at least,
looking up new pay-rock against the ever possible time of adversity.

"They ain't got to makin' calendars yet with the rainy day marked on
'em," he would say. "A'most any one of them innocent lookin' Mondays or
Tuesdays or Wednesdays is liable to be _it_ when you get right up on to
it. I'll have to start my old bones out again, I see that. Things are
beginnin' to green up a'ready." When he did go it was always understood
to be positively for not more than two weeks. A list of his reasons for
extending the time each year to three or four months would constitute
the ideal monograph on human duplicity. When hard-pushed on his return,