“‘Peter,’ he says, ‘my pile’s gittin’ big. It ain’t gonna be so very long till I have twenty thousand, and I want you to promise me this. When I leave I ain’t gonna say good-by to no one, but I’m goin’ to slip you somethin’ for a celebration, and I want you and the boys to have the rousingist farewell party this camp has ever seen—after I’m gone.’ “Not long from that a trader come into camp—the kind that carries ’round all sorts o’ dam’-fool trinkets and changes ’em fer ’most ennythin’—nuggets, dust, er even skins and hides. ’Mong his pack was a passel tied up in newspaper. We all grabbed fur it at onct, then decided we’d play cards fur it—not fur what was inside, understan,’ but ev’ry feller wanted to git the first chanct at that thar newspaper. “Bub won it. We lost heart in playin’ against him when we seen how anxious he was. “He tuk it and begun readin’ us the diff’runt items of int’rust, laugin’ and commentin’ in between—when all of a sudden his eye lit on somethin’. I never seen enny human bein’ change so in the same len’th of time. He jest stared—seemed to be readin’ it over and over ag’in. “After what ’peared to be a half hour, but I guess was ’bout five minutes, he looked up—an’ when we saw his face he had changed from a boy to a old man. “We was standin’ quiet, not darin’ to ask what happened. Most of us thought his folks was dead. But then he threw that paper down on the ground and laughed—the kind o’ laugh as I could believe the devil would give ye if ye was goin’ down to hell. Then we knew ’twarnt no act o’ God had upset him, but some dam’ trick that could only be thought out by a human bein’. “That was the last we saw o’ him. He went off into the woods. Joe picked up the paper and said he couldn’t find ennythin’ on thet page to disturb a body—mostly women’s fashions and one piece ’bout a gal elopin’ with a feller. I didn’ say nothin’, but I guessed it. That gal had sent him up to the mines to git a fortune and then gone and chucked him. “We was all nervous at supper ’cause Bub didn’ come in, and ’long ’bout ten we set out to look fur him. The woods is dark at night, an’ we couldn’t find a trace till Joe, searchin’ up at Bub’s claim, come on that thar bowlder you seen to-day, and, curious to say, he stumbled over somethin’ same as you done, but ’twarn’t no pickax head—’twar a human bootleg. Puttin’ his lantern down low, he seen Bub’s foot a-stickin’ out from under that rock, and the whole plumb thing had let down and flattened the life out o’ him. “’Twas a long time afore I went up to examine the place, and when I did thar was nothin’ to see but I figgered it out fur myself, and this is how it must ’a’ bin.