"Now and again I used to make a trip over to the Red Fox and spend the evenin'. One night along toward spring they knock me out over there and take $1200 of my dust. Anyway, when I wake up in my cabin next morning, I've got but $400 left. I've been living on that for a year now. [Illustration] "I've always blamed Pinleg Scoddy, Chenoa Pete and Mike Haggart for that trick. Next day they told me I got awful drunk and just threw my gold around like sawdust. Seein' I never did that all my life before, I'm pretty certain I didn't do it that night. Since then I've suspicioned every man that hangs around there but you. "In the condition I'm now in, one night in the open would be the death o' me. I don't want charity, but I do want to get hold of enough dust to take me to the hot springs at Sitka and get the aches and pains boiled outa my old carcass. I figger a thousand dollars would put me on my feet again as fit as a fiddle--why, man, I'm only seventy-seven! After that I'm goin' back to the Caribou diggin's. I had good ground there in the seventies. And there's a gulch there--But never mind that. Get me a thousand dollars, Lucky Jim, and you can keep every other color you take out of Easy Money bar this summer, and keep the bar to boot." "You'll go to Sitka next fall, Dad!" The old man's Adam's apple worked up and down for a few moments. "This yere Easy Money bar," he resumed, "is about two hundred miles up the river, but easily located once yuh have the key to its position. I cached my rocker under some moss on the mainland, and I reckon the high water last spring wiped out all traces of me, but yuh can't miss it. I'll tell yuh why." Dad lowered his voice to a whisper and imparted to Lucky Jim the information necessary to a recognition of Easy Money bar. While this was taking place Chenoa Pete cursed softly and fluently. He did not catch a word of the directions. He tiptoed away, still cursing. For some moments after Dad concluded Lucky Jim made no comment, just sat there smiling to himself. "Have I made it plain enough to yuh?" Dad inquired. Lucky Jim started. "As plain as day!" he rejoined. "Bein' the luckiest guy that ever was born, I could go up the river blindfold and find it. I'll hit the trail day after tomorrow sometime. How are you fixed for grub till I get back?" "I'll manage! I'll manage!" Dad hastily exclaimed. Lucky Jim threw a hurried glance around the cabin. The only thing his eye encountered in the line of food was half a sack of flour. "I'll tell you why I asked," he said. "I've got three hundred pounds of good grub down in my shack that the dogs can't possibly haul, and if I leave it behind you know what the squirrels will do to it. Wish you'd let me haul it over here." "I--I ain't got much room," Dad lied. "Yuh see----" "I'll haul it over anyway. Then you can use what you want of it and pay me for it in the fall. How is that?"