The
stunted brush stiffly carded the breeze that blew so persistently.
From rock to rock the gray old miner's gaze went wandering. So
undisturbed had been the surface of the earth since he had owned the
claim that a shallow channel, sluiced in the earth by a freshet of the
spring long past, remained as the waters had cut it. Slowly up the
course of this insignificant cicatrice old Jim ascended, his hands
still held beneath his arms, his long mustache and his grizzled beard
blown awry in the breeze. The pick he left behind.
Coming thus to a deeper gouge in the sand of the hill, he halted and
gazed attentively at a thick seam of rock outcropping sharply where the
long-gone freshet had laid it bare. In mining parlance it was
"quartzy." To Jim it appeared even more. He stooped above it and
attempted to break away a fragment with his fingers. At this he
failed. Rubbing off the dust and sand wherewith old mother nature was
beginning to cover it anew, he saw little spots, at which he scratched
with his nails.
"Awful cold it's gittin'," he drawled to himself, and sitting down on
the meagre bank of earth he once more thrust his hands beneath his coat
and looked at the outcropping dismally.
He had doubtless been gone from the cabin half an hour, and not a
stroke had he given with his pick, when, as he sat there looking at the
ground, the voice of Keno came on the wind from the door of the shack.
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