There was another pause. Grant looked at his son expectantly, but still Ross neither moved nor spoke. "Weimer is a good sort," Grant went on tentatively. "You'd like Weimer. He's a big man and jolly in every pound of his avoirdupois. Great story-teller--stories worth listening to, what's more. You wouldn't be dull with him." Grant leaned forward suddenly, and asked directly the question to which his son felt there could be but one reply in view of his father's appeal. "My boy, will you go?" CHAPTER II A STEADY HAND IN the two weeks which elapsed between Ross's visit to his father and his start for Wyoming he planned hopefully for the year. "Father has given me a free hand," he told his uncle. "As soon as I can get the work done and the claims patented I am at liberty to come back home, and I tell you I shall hustle. I shall hire as many men as are necessary in Miners' Camp, and take 'em over to Meadow Creek, where the claims are located, and just rush that work through." "I wonder," remarked Dr. Grant thoughtfully, "why that man Weimer doesn't hire it done instead of sending East for some one to manage the matter." Ross frowned into the open grate before which the two were sitting. "Why, uncle, I never thought of that, and father didn't mention it. In fact, he knows but very little about Miners' Camp or Weimer's work, and you know he hasn't seen Weimer in years. All he knows about the business is contained in a letter that Weimer got a man named Amos Steele to write. Weimer, it seems, can't use his eyes to read or write. The letter is very short. That man Steele is a mine-superintendent out there. Father knows about the company which he works for." "The very idea," cried Aunt Anne a few moments later in tearful indignation, "of Ross Grant's sending that boy away out West to the jumping-off place into the wilderness without knowing the conditions into which he's sending him! It's a shame. He's our boy, and I don't want him to go." The doctor made no reply, but retired precipitately to the office, where he had occupied himself at intervals all day with fitting up an emergency chest for Ross. The chest was a little oblong, hair-covered strong trunk, which had held all of the doctor's worldly possessions when, thirty years before, he had started to the medical college just as his brother, Ross's father, had started West for his financial "start." Into this chest uncle and nephew fitted all sorts of objects medical, from books to bandages. "When you're eighty miles from a physician, Ross, and shut in by snow-drifted mountains at that, it's well to have a few remedies and appliances on hand." "And, when you're several Sabbath days' journey from civilization, with time to burn on your hands, it's also well to have some light literature along," laughed Ross, tucking into the chest Piersol's "Histology." "I intend to make my time count for myself, as well as for Weimer and father."