At last, one day, about the first of November, he remained in his bunk in the cabin, unable to come down to the claim.  In their rough, uncouth way they pitied him, and would have given anything they could command to be able to relieve him.  But they seemed instinctively to feel that his case was something out of their reach, and with the exception of a weak suggestion from Jones, that he should try some of “them ar antibilious pills as he had in his box,” no course of medical treatment was contemplated.  Besides, was he not himself a doctor? and if he could do nothing, what should they be able to effect?  The argument was sufficiently conclusive; at least, Jones accepted it as such, and retired in some confusion, comforting himself by the perusal of the label on his box of pills, which really seemed to justify the suggestion he had made.  Twice after this, on days when the warm sunshine tempted him out of doors, he came down to the claim and sat by the wheel and watched them working; but he never did any more work.  He did not tell them he could not do it, or complain that he was too weak:  it was tacitly understood that his share of the season’s labor was over.

About the middle of November the winter stepped in in its sudden way and commenced to take possession of the valley of the Blue, and by the first of December the ice was so thick that the partners reluctantly stopped work.  “Jones of Chihuahua” had expressed his determination of going south to Santa Fe, to stay until spring among the “Greasers,” but Old Platte and Thompson would stay on the Blue for the winter, and to that end had laid in such provisions as were deemed necessary.  The settlement below on the Bar had been abandoned early in November; and it was doubtful if a white man besides themselves could be found by its waters any nearer than the end of the Great Canon of the Rio Colorado.  But they cared very little for that, and looked forward to their voluntary hibernation without any feeling of apprehension on the score of loneliness.  Both were hardy mountaineers.  Thompson had been the first man that ever performed the feat of crossing the range at Grey’s Peak in the middle of winter, with the aid of a pair of snow-shoes; and he and Old Platte knew that if their provisions gave out they could readily reach some of the Clear Creek diggings in the same way.  So Jones strapped his belt of gold-dust around his waist and prepared to depart.  He shook hands with the partners, and when Gentleman Dick, with a forced cheeriness of manner and with wishes for a pleasant winter in New Mexico, remarked, “Next spring the boys will give you a third of my share, Jones,” he stoutly and earnestly repudiated the implied idea, but with a confusion and uncertainty of manner that indicated a serious doubt in the soundness of his own assertions.

Gentleman Dick released the big hand as he lay in his blankets, and said for the last time, “Good-bye, Jones.”

“Good-bye, old man.”