“‘It can’t be,’ he whispers.  ‘It can’t be.’  He throwed hisself on to a goods’ box, and buried his face in his hands.  It gripes me to hear a man cry, so I went to the creek for a pail of water.

“I never heard what Struthers said, but it don’t take no Nick Carter to guess.

“That was the fall of the Fryin’ Pan strike—­do you mind it?  Shakespeare George put us on, so me and the kid got in ahead of the stampede.  We located one and two above discovery, and by Christmas we had a streak uncovered that was all gold.  She was coarse, and we averaged six ounces a day in pick-ups.  Man, that was ground!  I’ve flashed my candle along the drift face, where it looked like gold had been shot in with a scatter-gun.

“We was cleaned up and had our ‘pokes’ at the post when the first boat from Dawson smoked ’round the bend.

“Now, in them days, a man’s averdupoise was his abstract of title.  There was nothing said about records and patentees as long as you worked your ground; but, likewise, when you didn’t work it, somebody else usually did.  We had a thousand feet of as good dirt as ever laid out in the rain; but there was men around drulin’ to snipe it, and I knowed it was risky to leave.  However, I saw what was gnawin’ at the boy, and if ever a man needed a friend and criminal lawyer, that was the time.  According to the zodiac, certain persons, to the complainant unknown, had a mess of trouble comin’ up and I wanted to have the bail money handy.

“We jumped camp together.  I made oration to the general gnat-bitten populace, from the gang-plank, to the effect that one William P. Joyce, trap, crap, and snap shooter was due to happen back casual most any time, and any lady or gent desirous of witnessing at first hand, a shutzenfest with live targets, could be gratified by infestin’ in person or by proxy, the lands, tenements, and hereditaments of me and the kid.

“’Well, we hit the Seattle docks at a canter, him headed for the postal telegraph, me for a fruit-stand.  I bought a dollar’s worth of everything, from cracker-jack to cantaloupe, reserving the local option of eatin’ it there in whole or in part, and returning for more.  First fresh fruit in three years.  I reckon my proudest hour come when I found, beyond peradventure, that I hadn’t forgot the ‘Georgy Grind.’  What?  ‘Georgy Grind’ consists of feeding rough-hewed slabs of watermelon into your sou’ sou’east corner, and squirting a stream of seeds out from the other cardinal points, without stopping or strangling.

“I et and et, and then wallered up to the hotel, sweatin’ a different kind of fruit juice from every pore.  Not wishing to play any favourites, I’d picked up a basket of tomatoes, a gunny-sack of pineapples, and a peck of green plums on the way.  Them plums done the business.  I’d orter let bad enough alone.  They was non-union, and I begin having trouble with my inside help.  Morrow turned in a hurry-up call for the Red Cross, two medical colleges, and the Society of Psycolic Research.  Between ’em they diagnosed me as containing everything from ‘housemaid’s knee’ to homesickness of the vital organs, but I know.  I swallered a plum pit, and it sprouted.