Billy pointed, and he also handed up the piece that the bullet had knocked loose. Yes, the fresh side of the piece was white and glistening--and the whiteness was mottled with dull yellow. The scar in the rocky ridge also was white and yellow mottled. "Is it gold, Charley?" gasped Billy, anxiously. "I don't know, for sure," said Charley, trying not to be foolish. "But I think this is quartz, all right enough; and if that yellow's soft enough to be scraped with a knife blade it's liable to be gold." He drew out his knife from his belt and scraped at the yellow. Where the yellow was thickest it could--yes, it could be scraped in tiny shavings. Billy was peering close; and he was breathing so fast that, Charley afterward declared, he could be heard half a mile. But no matter now. "It's gold!" Charley's voice came tense and stammery. "Anyway, it's soft." "Do you suppose the whole rock's full of gold?" "Maybe. Let's knock off some more. Maybe the whole hill's full of gold--all the rock! Hurrah!" "Hurrah! Maybe it'll get solider, deeper we go," cheered Billy, hopefully. Charley hammered with his boot heel and pried with his knife; Billy hammered with his rifle-butt; and when they knocked off even a chip, it showed traces of gold. Why, wherever the rock stuck up, making little humps and furrows, it seemed to be the one kind: quartz-blotched and yellow-spotted. "Hurrah!" again cheered Charley. "We ought to stake off claims. Who found it? I saw the bear." "And I shot the bullet," returned Billy. "Well, there's enough for all, anyway. It'll belong to the whole party. What'll we call it? Grizzly? Lucky Bullet?" They were so busy searching and gloating that they had forgotten the pack animals below and even the whereabouts of the men of the party. On a sudden, as if replying to Charley's queries, Billy cried out excitedly: "Somebody else has been up here! Here's a little pile of loose rock, and a stake with a board sign on it, that says----shucks. Can't quite make it out. Come on and help me." Over scrambled Charley, to where Billy was crouching and peering at a weathered board set up in a shallow hollow. Billy's voice rang triumphantly. "'Golden West,' it says. 'Golden West Mine.' And----'I lay claim to as much of this lode running east and west as is allowed by miners' law. Tom Jones. August 22, 1848.'" "Golden West!" exclaimed Charley, crashing and sliding to Billy's side. "Hurrah! That's the mine we've been looking for, Billy! It's our mine. It's the one----" "That's where you're mistaken, bub," interrupted a new voice, speaking cold and distinctly. "Now you pile out of there, and git! Don't come back again, either." Looking up, startled (as did Billy likewise), Charley faced the long-nosed man and his two companions gazing in upon them, over the brushy rim of the hollow and the muzzles of three guns. XXI MINERS' JUSTICE