"I judge you'll get no good by tearing your shirt, old pard," said the honest scout. "See here, now. Did you ever set your heart on a single thing, that when you got it you wondered how the snakes you could ever have been so hot on gettin' it? No, you didn't. About this _placer_. Maybe we shall find plenty of stuff--maybe little--maybe none at all. But whatever we find or don't find, it's no part of good sense to tear our shirts a' thinkin' of it." "No, it isn't," agreed the other. "But--`many a slip,' etc." "'M, yes. What's the odds, though? We can always light on fresh ground. And if the reds go on the war-path soon as the grass grows, it'd do us both good to get a scouting berth with the command for a spell." Vipan's forebodings were destined to be realised. A few mornings later the two occupants of the winter cabin were awakened by the trampling of many hoofs. With their minds full of the threats of those around them, both seized their rifles and stood ready for any emergency. But with no body of jealous and exasperated miners had they now to deal. Cautiously peering forth, their gaze fell upon the trappings and accoutrements of a cavalry patrol. A furious curse escaped Vipan's lips. His plans were ruined. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. A _cache_ is a sort of underground storeroom or place of concealment--generally jar-shaped--wherein peltries and other goods are deposited, pending their convenient removal. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. HENNIKER CITY. Henniker City was a typical prairie township in no wise bearing out the imposing idea which its name might convey. It might have contained some five score dwellings, mainly of the log-hut order; a few frame houses, with real glazed windows figuring as the aristocratic and advanced representatives of civilised architecture among the more primitive structures. It boasted a brace of churches, one of which, only occasionally used, having been reared through the efforts of a travelling priest attached to the nearest Catholic mission, the other representing no creed in particular, though chiefly resorted to by what our friend Smokestack Bill was wont to define as "the pizenest kind of Hard-shell Baptists," a definition we should be loth to attempt to elucidate. It boasted more stores than churches, and more drinking saloons than stores. It contained a bank, whose manager reckoned handiness at drawing, and, if necessary, using, the six-shooter at least as essential a qualification for his clerks as the footing up of figures. It boasted a sheriff, whose three predecessors had "died in their boots" within less than the same number of years. And for population, fixed and floating, it mainly comprised about as daredevil, swash-bucklering, unscrupulous a set of cut throats, as ever shot a winning adversary at euchre or "held up" [from "Hold up your hands"--the "road agent's" warning] the Pony Express.