"He sure isn't dead," Thure declared, as the struggles of the man nearly pitched both of them out of the saddle. "Just give me a hand, Bud; for, I reckon, we'll have to lower him to the ground until he gets his right senses back or quits this twitching and jerking. I am afraid he will start the wound to bleeding again." Bud quickly sprang off the back of his horse; and together and as gently as possible the two boys lowered the wounded miner from the saddle and laid him down on a little mound of grass. A few rods away a small stream of water wound its way, half-hidden by tall grass and bushes and low trees, through the little valley where they had stopped. "Get your hat full of water," Thure said, as he bent down to see if the bandage over the wound was still in its place. "Seems to me he ought to be getting his senses back by this time." Bud at once started off on the run for the water and soon was back with his broad-brimmed felt hat full of the cooling fluid; and, kneeling down by the side of the wounded man, who now lay quiet, with eyes closed, although he was still muttering incoherently, he bathed the hot forehead and the swollen lumps on the back of his head. Suddenly the miner's eyes opened and stared wonderingly around him and up into the faces of the two boys. For a minute he did not seem to be able to comprehend what had happened. Then the blank wondering look suddenly left his eyes. "Did they get the gold?" and his hand went quickly to his waist. There was no belt there. "Gone! A good twenty pounds of as fine gold as was ever dug from the earth, gone!--Gods, if they had but given me any kind of a show, they would not have got it so easily!" and his eyes flamed and he attempted to sit up, but fell back with a groan and a whitening face. For a minute or two he lay with eyes closed, breathing heavily. Evidently he was trying to collect his thoughts, to realize his situation. When he opened his eyes again there was a solemn, an awed look in them that had not been there before, and the anger had gone. "I have been stabbed," he said slowly, "and I am dying." "No, no. The knife did not go near your heart. It struck too low. You will soon be all right again. Wait until we get you home and mother will soon make a whole man of you. Mother is about the best nurse in all California," and Thure gripped one of the hard toil-worn hands and smiled encouragingly.