“S’port!” sniffed the undutiful Dode, wearily, and yet humorously and scornfully. “I ain’t seed much s’port, ez I kin remember. Mebbe ye’re thinkin’ uv all the fine schoolin’ I’ve had, er the places I’ve been.” He slapped at another fly. Old Queeder felt the sneer, but as he saw it it was scarcely his fault. He had worked. At the same time he felt the futility of quarreling with Dode, who was younger and stronger and no longer, owing to many family quarrels, bearing him any filial respect. As a matter of fact it was the other way about. From having endured many cuffs and blows in his youth Dode was now much the more powerful physically, and in any contest could easily outdo his father; and Queeder, from at first having ruled and seen his word law, was now compelled to take second, even third and fourth, place, and by contention and all but useless snarling gain the very little consideration that he received. But in spite of all this they lived together indifferently. And day after day—once Judge Blow had returned to Taney—time was bringing nearer and nearer the tide of mining and the amazing boom that went with it. Indeed every day, like a gathering storm cloud, it might have been noted by the sensitive as approaching closer and closer, only these unwitting holders were not sensitive. They had not the slightest inkling as yet of all that was to be. Here in this roadless, townless region how was one to know. Prospectors passed to the north and the south of them; but as yet none had ever come directly to this wonderful patch upon which Queeder and his family rested. It was in too out-of-the-way a place—a briary, woodsy, rocky corner. Then one sunny June morning— “Hi, thar!” called Cal Arnold, their next neighbor, who lived some three miles further on, who now halted his rickety wagon and bony horses along the road opposite the field in which Queeder was working. “Hyur the news?” He spoke briskly, shifting his cud of tobacco and eyeing Queeder with the chirpiness of one who brings diverting information. “No; what?” asked Queeder, ceasing his “cultivating” with a worn one-share plough and coming over and leaning on his zinc fence, rubbing a hand through his sparse hair the while. “Ol’ Dunk Porter down here to Newton’s sold his farm,” replied Cal, shrewdly and jubilantly, as though he were relating the tale of a great battle or the suspected approach of the end of the world. “An’ he got three thousan’ dollars fer it.” He rolled the sum deliciously under his tongue. “Yuh don’t say!” said Queeder quietly but with profound and amazed astonishment. “Three thousan’?” He stirred as one who hears of the impossible being accomplished and knows it can’t be true. “Whut fer?”