Without the slightest intention of working any more, Jim sauntered back to the place where the pick was lying on the hill and took it up.  By chance he thought of the ledge of quartz above in the rain-sluiced channel.

“Might as well hit her a lick,” he drawled to himself, and climbing to the spot he drove the point of his implement into a crevice of the rock and broke away a piece of two or three pounds in weight.  This he took in his big, red hands, which were numbing in the cold.

For a moment he looked at the fragment of quartz with unbelieving eyes.  He wet it with his tongue.  Then a something that answered in Jim to excitement pumped from his heart abruptly.

The rock was flecked all through with tiny specks of metal that the miner knew unerringly.

It was gold.

CHAPTER XII

THE MAKING OF A CHRISTMAS-TREE

Despite the snow that fell that night, despite the near approach of Christmas, old Jim’s discovery aroused a great excitement in the camp.  That very evening the news was known throughout all Borealis, and all next day, in the driving storm, the hill was visited, the ledge was viewed, and the topic was discussed at length in all its amazing features.

Teamsters, miners, loiterers—­all, even including the gambler—­came to pay their homage at the hiding-place of one of Mammon’s family.  All the mountain-side was taken up in claims.  The calmest man in all the hills was Jim himself.

Parky made him an offer without the slightest hesitation.

“I’ll square off your bill at the store,” he said, “and give you a hundred dollars’ worth of grub for the claim and prospect just as she stands.”

“Not to-day,” old Jim replied.  “I never do no swapping at the other’s feller’s terms when I’m busy.  We’ve got to get ready for Christmas, and you don’t look to me like Santy Claus hunting ’round for lovely things to do.”

“Anyway, I’ll send up a lot of grub,” declared the gambler, with a wonderful softening of the heart.  “I was foolin’—­just havin’ a joke—­the last time you was down to the store.  You know you can have the best we’ve got in the deck.”

“Wal, I ’ain’t washed the taste of your joke clean out of my mouth just yet, so I won’t bother you to-day,” drawled Jim; and with muttered curses the gambler left, determined to have that ledge of gold-bearing rock, let the cost be what it might.

“I guess we’ll have to quit on that there Christmas-tree,” said the blacksmith, who was present with others at the cabin.  “Seems you didn’t have time to go to the Pinyon hills and fetch one back.”

“If only I hadn’t puttered ’round with the work on the claim,” said Jim, “we might have had that tree as well as not.  But I’ll tell you what we can do.  We can cut down the alders and willows at the spring, and bind a lot together and tie on some branches of mountain-tea and make a tree.  That is, you fellers can, for little Skeezucks ain’t a-feelin’ right well to-day, and I reckon I’ll stay close beside him till he spruces up.”