He turned and dragged himself back toward the house. An idea came to Dog, who had racked his brain for three days for one--came with that suddenness that is characteristic of ideas. Anything was better than the present situation. He called the boy back, spoke to him in hushed tones. “There might be.” “Might be what?” “Three hundred dollars in that creek. I’m not saying there is, but I’ll say that it looks an awful lot like a creek that Ducky and I took thirty thousand dollars out of in the Klondike, and I might add--” “How do you get gold out of a creek?” Hooray! There might be a chance yet. Get the lad interested in any kind of outdoor work, and give the good old Montana ozone a chance on him. “I’ll show you.” He ran to the house, dived into a cupboard and returned with a deep pie-pan. It was not shaped just right, but it would answer. He picked up a shovel from where it leaned against the corner of the house, and led Percival up the creek and showed him how to wash gravel. And the third pan showed color--just a trace, but enough to show. Of course, Percival did not know that color and gold in paying quantities are things often as far apart as Montana is from New York. But Dog knew that the sight of color will edge a chechahco, rouse lust within his soul, stir him to feats of physical endurance undreamed of. He sneaked away and joined Ducky in a fence-mending job. * * * * * That night a very tired Percival, but a Percival with a real appetite, joined them at dinner, stoked himself with beans and fried pork, and retired immediately afterward to the loft. “He’s gone cuckoo now,” Spud Dugan told Dog and Ducky, jerking his bald head toward the ceiling hole. “Been out up the creek all day, panning for gold.” “You let him alone,” said Dog. “Don’t worry.” Spud stacked a precarious load of dishes in the nightly chore of clearing off. “Letting him alone is what suits me best.” “You’d better salt that creek some,” Ducky suggested. “Long about ten o’clock tomorrow morning, that kid’ll get tired of mining. We got three-four old Klondike nuggets somewhere, aint we?” Dog nodded, grinning. He went to an old trunk in a far corner of the sleeping-room, rummaged in it profanely and finally came back with a small chamois sack which, upended, spewed forth five pieces of rough gold, each about as big as a shriveled pea. “We gave away too many souvenirs,” he commented, “but I’ll plant one of these tomorrow, maybe two the next day, and that’ll leave two for the day after, and he might just happen to pick up one or two on his own account.” “Fat chance, on that creek! You gotta salt it. Get up there first thing, and put one in the gravel where he’s left his shovel stuck in. A man always pans that shovelful.” * * * * *