"I estimated it roughly at about five thousand dollars. When I first located the vein I mortared and panned enough to get a fair idea of how it was running. The vein averaged about ten inches, fairly uniform so far. The storm last night uncovered it so now it stands out clean from the side of the cut like an outcropping; or it did, before I covered it up. I didn't want to come away and leave it open. There are some strangers camped right beside me. Government men--but I didn't like the look of their packer." "Didn't like the look--my goodness, Mother! The fellow came to the tent when I was there getting ready to start home, and he started snooping around in the corner where Bill had a lot of this ore. He was bound and de-_ter_-mined he'd see what was in the sack. I told him more than once to go--but I had to shoot into the ground beside him before he'd go. He went then, all right!" Her mother looked alarmed. "Why, Doris! And where was Bill?" "I was up at the claims with Tommy," Bill explained. "You can see, maybe, why I can't be away long--and why I covered up this vein." "Oh dear!" Mrs. Hunter leaned her head on her hand as if she had become suddenly aware of a great weariness. "Must _you_ go through all that fighting and grasping over gold? A boom always seems to me like a lot of wild animals fighting and tearing at one another, to get a bone which the first one on the hunting ground has already cleaned." She closed her eyes tightly for an instant, then looked wistfully from Doris to Bill. "I don't know but what gold costs more than it's worth, after all," she said. "And the more you have, the more terrible the price. I don't know but what I'd just about as soon see you two face poverty together, as to see you face a boom. You know," she added apologetically, "I was born in Virginia City. I've seen sudden wealth and sudden poverty. And the sudden wealth was worse, sometimes--though I never heard of a man shooting himself because he struck it rich, and they do sometimes when they lose everything." "That's what Mr. Rayfield meant, I guess. He said if Bill had a lot of ore like the sample he saw, he'd have Bill's friends pray that wealth wouldn't spoil him." Doris smiled tolerantly at her mother, as youth is wont to smile at experience. "Who's Rayfield?" Don Hunter pushed back his chair with a rasping sound on the bare floor. "How did he come to see a sample? Doris, you help your mother with the dishes; you ought to have a lot to talk over. Bill, come on out on the porch and let's get at the bottom of this. So far I can't make head nor tail of anything."