“And on the forty-five-nineties,” Captain McGregor rumbled back as he passed out the door.

“John Melton—­Mr. Melton, sir.  Can he see you?”

“See here, Welse, what’s this mean?” John Melton followed wrathfully on the heels of the clerk, and he almost walked over him as he flourished a paper before the head of the company.  “Read that!  What’s it stand for?”

Jacob Welse glanced over it and looked up coolly.  “One thousand pounds of grub.”

“That’s what I say, but that fellow you’ve got in the warehouse says no,—­five hundred’s all it’s good for.”

“He spoke the truth.”

“But—­”

“It stands for one thousand pounds, but in the warehouse it is only good for five hundred.”

“That your signature?” thrusting the receipt again into the other’s line of vision.

“Yes.”

“Then what are you going to do about it?”

“Give you five hundred.  What are you going to do about it?”

“Refuse to take it.”

“Very good.  There is no further discussion.”

“Yes there is.  I propose to have no further dealings with you.  I’m rich enough to freight my own stuff in over the Passes, and I will next year.  Our business stops right now and for all time.”

“I cannot object to that.  You have three hundred thousand dollars in dust deposited with me.  Go to Mr. Atsheler and draw it at once.”

The man fumed impotently up and down.  “Can’t I get that other five hundred?  Great God, man!  I’ve paid for it!  You don’t intend me to starve?”

“Look here, Melton.”  Jacob Welse paused to knock the ash from his cigar.  “At this very moment what are you working for?  What are you trying to get?”

“A thousand pounds of grub.”

“For your own stomach?”

The Bonanzo king nodded his head.

“Just so.”  The lines showed more sharply on Jacob Welse’s forehead.  “You are working for your own stomach.  I am working for the stomachs of twenty thousand.”

“But you filled Tim McReady’s thousand pounds yesterday all right.”

“The scale-down did not go into effect until to-day.”

“But why am I the one to get it in the neck hard?”

“Why didn’t you come yesterday, and Tim McReady to-day?”

Melton’s face went blank, and Jacob Welse answered his own question with shrugging shoulders.

“That’s the way it stands, Melton.  No favoritism.  If you hold me responsible for Tim McReady, I shall hold you responsible for not coming yesterday.  Better we both throw it upon Providence.  You went through the Forty Mile Famine.  You are a white man.  A Bonanzo property, or a block of Bonanzo properties, does not entitle you to a pound more than the oldest penniless ‘sour-dough’ or the newest baby born.  Trust me.  As long as I have a pound of grub you shall not starve.  Stiffen up.  Shake hands.  Get a smile on your face and make the best of it.”