"I tink I knew all dem consarned gang, but dere ist no Veston mit 'em." Ross dragged to the little bare board table a box marked in big letters, "Ruford's Canned Tomatoes, The Yellow Brand," and, turning the box on end, straddled it opposite Weimer. Weimer, eating and drinking noisily, found time to ask vindictively, "Ist he for more medicine come mit you?" Ross shook his head, and bent over his plate. The plate was tin. The cup out of which he drank his coffee was also tin. His knife and fork were steel, and his spoon was pewter. The place of the lacking milk pitcher was usurped by a tin can of condensed milk with the top bent back and the milk dried all over the sides. But Ross ate--how he ate! Potatoes followed ham, and coffee followed potatoes, and onions followed both, and then he began all over again. Never had eating been such serious work with him. But never, also, had his muscles been so firm and hard. As for a pickaxe, it was coming to feel no heavier than the baseball bat which he had always rather scorned. "I wonder," he began after a pause, "what Lon's up to here, anyway." The question started Weimer on his favorite topic, the claim jumpers and the injustice of the mining laws. He could not talk fast enough in English, and so dropped into his native German. Ross, accustomed to his tirades, cleared away the dishes, pushed the table back against the dirt chinked logs, and lay down on the blankets of his bunk for a few moments, his eyes glued on the little nickel clock. He broke into the other's scolding monologue. "In ten minutes we must go back to work." Weimer scowled darkly. His lids, red and swollen, almost obscured his pale-blue eyes. "Mine eyes ist too pad to-day," he declared. "I vill not to go out in de sun again." A few weeks before, this oft-repeated declaration had alarmed Ross. Now he made no reply. But, when the hands of the nickel clock indicated one, he arose and put on his oiled jumper and oilskin cap. "Come, Uncle Jake," he said in a strong, decided tone. "Here are your goggles. Get busy, or the McKenzie outfit will have our claims in spite of us. Now, when there are three to watch instead of two, we must show the mettle we're made of." Moved by the magic statement, ever new and ever powerful, that the claims might be jumped, Uncle Jake, forgetting that in substance he had made the same objection to work twice a day for weeks and that Ross had overcome his objections in substantially the same way, "got busy." And presently Ross led him out, his eyes not only securely goggled, but covered as well with a black cloth which he pressed fearfully against the goggles.