E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 25809-h.htm or 25809-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/8/0/25809/25809-h/25809-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/8/0/25809/25809-h.zip) THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH by HENRY WALLACE PHILLIPS Author of Red Saunders Plain Mary Smith etc. With Illustrations by F. Graham Cootes New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Copyright 1908 The Bobbs-Merrill Company October THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH THE MASCOT OF SWEET BRIAR GULCH The gulch ran in a trough of beauty to the foot of Jones's Hill, which rose in a sweeping curve into the clouds. Wild flowers, trees in profuse leaf, and mats of vines covered the scarred earth, and the sky was as limpid as spring water; the air carried a weight of heart-stirring odors, yet Jim Felton, sitting on the door-step of his cabin in the brilliant sunshine, was not a happy man. He looked at the hollow of the gulch and cursed it manfully and bitterly. The gold should be there--Jim had figured it all out. The old wash cut at right angles to the creek, and at the turn was where its freight of yellow metal should have been deposited, but when you got down to the bed-rock, the blasted stuff was either slanted so nothing could stay on it, or was rotten--crumbling in your fingers, and that kind of bed will hold nothing. Therefore Jim had sunk about fifty prospect holes; got colors under the grass-roots, as evidence that pay should be there--and nothing but ashy wash beneath it. When a man is alone, and thinks things are wrong, optimism comes down on the run, the shades of pessimism gather fast and furious--more especially if a man does his own cooking, and the raw material is limited, at that. The sun had not moved the shadows three inches before Jim had reached the conclusion that this world was all a practical joke, of so low an order that no sensible man would even laugh at it, and he drew a letter from his pocket in proof thereof. It was a thin letter, written on delicate paper in a delicate hand, and it showed much wear. He read for the thousandth time: Dearest Jim--And again I must say "no." Of course you will not understand, for which foolish reason I like you all the better, but you must try to take my point of view. You say that we can be married on nothing and take our chances. So we can, old simple-heart--but aren't those chances all against us? Would you like to be forced to work in some office for just enough to live on? You know you would not, and you know how you would suffer in such slavery.