“I’ve been lookin’ at that hole in the ground back there since I bought it, and with my new processes I can skin gold out of it in a way to make your eyes bulge out. You’ll see.” He sat down to his breakfast at last. It was a simple meal, suggesting that the stranger did not expect to live in luxury; but he invited them to share it with him. “No, we’ll be goin’,” they told him. “Come up and see me often,” he said to them, and smiled at their backs as he watched them walk away. Not until they were halfway to the foot of the hill did any of them remember that they had not learned the stranger’s name. Persimmon Pete came back for this desired information, poking his bushy beard again through the narrow door. “Beggin’ yer pardin!” he said. “But the boys has delegated me to inquire how you spell it.” The stranger’s gurgling laugh rang out again. “Spell what?” “Why, your name, o’ course.” The stranger came to the door of the cabin, and swung his sinewy hand up at the flag floating from the top of the trimmed aspen. “See that?” he said. “I see the flag, if that’s what you mean.” “There are a number of things that I’m short on, but I’m long on two things--patriotism and pluck. Ever hear of a hiatus?” Persimmon Pete shook his puzzled head. “Never did,” he declared. “Well, a hiatus is a sort of vacancy between one something and another something. Do you get that? There came a hiatus in my memory--a sort of chink--and my name dropped out through that chink. Find it for me, and I’ll give you good money. So long as I couldn’t remember my own, I’ve taken one that everybody knows and everybody can remember. Call me Uncle Samuel.” He looked at the flag again. “N-n-not Uncle Sus-Sam?” “The same. I see that you recognize the name; so, of course, you can’t forget it. I’m Uncle Sam, and the flag up there is my emblem. What can’t be done under the folds of that flag there ain’t no use trying to do. For which reason I know that I’ll get blood out of this turnip.” Persimmon Pete turned away. “Crazy as a bedbug,” he reported to the men who were awaiting him. “He calls himself Uncle Sam, and says that the flag is his emblem.” Before the day ended the stranger in the tenderfoot’s cabin had been given another name by the amused people of Blossom Range; they called him the Fool of Folly Mountain. As a usual thing, little attention was paid to the men who delved here and there about the town in search of the elusive metal on which the town based its prosperity. Miners and prospectors came and they went, and no one noted either their coming or going, save the men who sold them grub and outfits. But it was different with Uncle Sam; because he had given a queer name and achieved another, and because he professed to be able to get gold where none was believed to exist.