“How’s the pup?” Carmack inquired when they strolled back into camp.

“To hell with pups!” was Hootchinoo Bill’s reply.  “Me and Kink’s goin’ a-lookin’ for Too Much Gold when we get rested up.”

Too Much Gold was the fabled creek of which all sour doughs dreamed, whereof it was said the gold was so thick that, in order to wash it, gravel must first be shovelled into the sluice-boxes.  But the several days’ rest, preliminary to the quest for Too Much Gold, brought a slight change in their plan, inasmuch as it brought one Ans Handerson, a Swede.

Ans Handerson had been working for wages all summer at Miller Creek over on the Sixty Mile, and, the summer done, had strayed up Bonanza like many another waif helplessly adrift on the gold tides that swept willy-nilly across the land.  He was tall and lanky.  His arms were long, like prehistoric man’s, and his hands were like soup-plates, twisted and gnarled, and big-knuckled from toil.  He was slow of utterance and movement, and his eyes, pale blue as his hair was pale yellow, seemed filled with an immortal dreaming, the stuff of which no man knew, and himself least of all.  Perhaps this appearance of immortal dreaming was due to a supreme and vacuous innocence.  At any rate, this was the valuation men of ordinary clay put upon him, and there was nothing extraordinary about the composition of Hootchinoo Bill and Kink Mitchell.

The partners had spent a day of visiting and gossip, and in the evening met in the temporary quarters of the Monte Carlo—­a large tent were stampeders rested their weary bones and bad whisky sold at a dollar a drink.  Since the only money in circulation was dust, and since the house took the “down-weight” on the scales, a drink cost something more than a dollar.  Bill and Kink were not drinking, principally for the reason that their one and common sack was not strong enough to stand many excursions to the scales.

“Say, Bill, I’ve got a chechaquo on the string for a sack of flour,” Mitchell announced jubilantly.

Bill looked interested and pleased.  Grub as scarce, and they were not over-plentifully supplied for the quest after Too Much Gold.

“Flour’s worth a dollar a pound,” he answered.  “How like do you calculate to get your finger on it?”

“Trade ’m a half-interest in that claim of ourn,” Kink answered.

“What claim?” Bill was surprised.  Then he remembered the reservation he had staked off for the Swedes, and said, “Oh!”

“I wouldn’t be so clost about it, though,” he added.  “Give ’m the whole thing while you’re about it, in a right free-handed way.”

Bill shook his head.  “If I did, he’d get clean scairt and prance off.  I’m lettin’ on as how the ground is believed to be valuable, an’ that we’re lettin’ go half just because we’re monstrous short on grub.  After the dicker we can make him a present of the whole shebang.”

“If somebody ain’t disregarded our notice,” Bill objected, though he was plainly pleased at the prospect of exchanging the claim for a sack of flour.