Most men in the camp had a trunkful of mining stock picked up here and there, a lot of it feet in wildcat concerns hawked about in exchange for meal tickets, boots, shirts, liquor, and other supplies. This was scattered so promiscuously that one could acquire reams of it without giving much in actual value for it. Dodson’s rise to affluence was a camp joke. It was said that he sold two bags of bones and a pile of kindling for a million dollars. What he actually did was to swap his ramshackle wagon and starving team for fifty feet in the Never Say Die, twenty-five feet in the Gambler’s Luck, twenty in the Mollie Macrae, and fifteen in the Road to China. He was given a quart of whisky to boot. The trade was made while Dodson was drunk, and all his saloon cronies chuckled over the way he had been sold. For all of these were stock jobbing enterprises and nothing more. None of them were doing any developing at all. A mine adjacent to the Never Say Die and the Gambler’s Luck struck it rich. There was a sympathetic boom in mines of surrounding territory. The Never Say Die sank a shaft and ran a crosscut. This cut into a vein that appeared to be a bonanza. Half seas over again, Dodson sold out his interest in both prospects at the height of the boom. Within a week it was known that the crosscut had run into only a small pocket. Luck pursued Dodson. It would not let him alone. He took a flyer in Ophir stock, and the Ophir soared. He invested in Crown Point and the Belcher. Both were big winners. Presently a younger brother of the new magnate appeared on the scene to manage his interests. Ralph Dodson was a big athletic fellow with glossy black hair and small black moustache. The dark eyes were keen and cold. They roved a good deal, but it was noticeable that they came to pause whenever they fell on a good-looking woman. He had a hail-fellow-well-met manner, but there was something hard and icy in him that frustrated his jollity. The younger brother had a powerful influence over Robert Dodson. The man pulled himself up and stopped drinking. He was of nature parsimonious, and he hung on to his fortune in spite of the parasites who fawned on him. Ralph’s cool business judgment was a factor in the rapid increase of it. Scot McClintock returned to civil life to find that the wastrel and ne’er-do-well was an important figure in the community. He had the responsibilities that go with wealth, and these always entail a certain amount of public recognition. The bullet head of Robert Dodson might be seen among the notables at the International Hotel. His shifty yellow eyes looked down from the platform on various important occasions. Both Scot and his brother had saved money. They had, too, a long credit at the banks and among private friends. They went into freighting on an extensive scale. They bought teams, increasing gradually the size of their business. Ore and wood contracts were their specialties.