"I'll square off your bill at the store," he said, "and give you a
hundred dollars' worth of grub for the claim and prospect just as she
stands."
"Not to-day," old Jim replied. "I never do no swapping at the other's
feller's terms when I'm busy. We've got to get ready for Christmas,
and you don't look to me like Santy Claus hunting 'round for lovely
things to do."
"Anyway, I'll send up a lot of grub," declared the gambler, with a
wonderful softening of the heart. "I was foolin'--just havin' a
joke--the last time you was down to the store. You know you can have
the best we've got in the deck."
"Wal, I 'ain't washed the taste of your joke clean out of my mouth just
yet, so I won't bother you to-day," drawled Jim; and with muttered
curses the gambler left, determined to have that ledge of gold-bearing
rock, let the cost be what it might.
"I guess we'll have to quit on that there Christmas-tree," said the
blacksmith, who was present with others at the cabin. "Seems you
didn't have time to go to the Pinyon hills and fetch one back."
"If only I hadn't puttered 'round with the work on the claim," said
Jim, "we might have had that tree as well as not. But I'll tell you
what we can do. We can cut down the alders and willows at the spring,
and bind a lot together and tie on some branches of mountain-tea and
make a tree.
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