Philip stared hard at the big man, his excellent memory for faces serving him slowly but surely. When he spoke it was to say: “People are always telling us this is a little world, and I’ll believe it, after this. Don’t you remember me?--and the K.P. train last spring?” The thick-chested giant got upon his feet “Well, I’ll be dawg-goned! Sure I ricollect! You’re the young feller I told to hump hisself and go sit with the li’l’ black-eyed gal that had the sick daddy. Put ’er there!” and he gave Philip’s hand a grip that made the knuckles crack. Philip slid from the saddle, smiling a sheepish apology. “Sorry I had to come on the scene swearing like an abandoned pirate, but these chicken-brained jacks have just about worn me out. Queer we should stumble upon each other in this God-forsaken place. Where do you come from?” “Hoofed it up from the Aspen diggin’s. Aimin’ to get out o’ the woods afore I get snowed under and can’t. You ain’t had all the bad luck. Yiste’day I lost my canary, pack, blankets and all, in the Roarin’ Fork. Li’l’ cuss slipped and rolled into the creek and I didn’t get to save nothin’ but the old Winchester I was totin’ and a li’l’ bite o’ bread and meat I had in my pockets. Box o’ matches went with the hide and taller, and I’d ’a’ slep’ cold last night if I hadn’t run onto a bunch o’ Leadville men back yonder a piece and hunkered down afore their fire.” Philip started at the mention of the Leadville men, but he deferred the question that rose instantly to his lips. “You are going out by way of the pass over the main range at the head of Chalk Creek?” he asked. “Aimin’ to get out thataway; yes.” “All right; I’m headed that way, too, and, as you see, I have one more horse than I can ride. I’ll give you a lift, if you say so.” The big man’s laugh was like the rumbling of distant thunder. “If I say so? Say, young feller me lad, I ain’t got but one mouth, but I reckon if I had a dozen of ’em they’d all be sayin’ so at once,” he affirmed gratefully. “Want to pitch out right now?” “No; I’ll eat first. Didn’t want to stop until I got to the top of the pass.” Philip unslung his provision haversack and spread the contents on the flat rock. Over the meal, which he invited the wayfarer to share with him, he got the story of the bearded man’s summer; weary months of prospecting in the western slope wilderness with nothing to show for it, not even the specimens from the few putative discoveries he had made, since these had gone to the bottom of the Roaring Fork with the drowned burro. “Hard luck,” Philip commented, when the brief tale of discouragement had been told. “What will you do now?” “Same as every busted prospector does: hunt me a winter job in a smelter ’r stamp-mill and sweat at it till I get enough spondulix ahead to buy me another grub-stake.” “Go to work as a day-laborer?” “You’ve named it. Minin’s the only trade I know; and the mills ain’t payin’ miner’s wages for shovelin’ ore into the stamps.”