Their way lay along the flank of Table Mountain,—­a wandering trail through a tangled solitude that might have seemed virgin and unbroken but for a few oyster-cans, yeast-powder tins, and empty bottles that had been apparently stranded by the “first low wash” of pioneer waves.  On the ragged trunk of an enormous pine hung a few tufts of gray hair caught from a passing grizzly, but in strange juxtaposition at its foot lay an empty bottle of incomparable bitters,—­the chef-d’oeuvre of a hygienic civilization, and blazoned with the arms of an all-healing republic.  The head of a rattlesnake peered from a case that had contained tobacco, which was still brightly placarded with the high-colored effigy of a popular danseuse.  And a little beyond this the soil was broken and fissured, there was a confused mass of roughly hewn timber, a straggling line of sluicing, a heap of gravel and dirt, a rude cabin, and the claim of Johnson.

Except for the rudest purposes of shelter from rain and cold, the cabin possessed but little advantage over the simple savagery of surrounding nature.  It had all the practical directness of the habitation of some animal, without its comfort or picturesque quality; the very birds that haunted it for food must have felt their own superiority as architects.  It was inconceivably dirty, even with its scant capacity for accretion; it was singularly stale, even in its newness and freshness of material.  Unspeakably dreary as it was in shadow, the sunlight visited it in a blind, aching, purposeless way, as if despairing of mellowing its outlines or of even tanning it into color.

The claim worked by Johnson in his intervals of sobriety was represented by half a dozen rude openings in the mountain-side, with the heaped-up debris of rock and gravel before the mouth of each.  They gave very little evidence of engineering skill or constructive purpose, or indeed showed anything but the vague, successively abandoned essays of their projector.  To-day they served another purpose, for as the sun had heated the little cabin almost to the point of combustion, curling up the long dry shingles, and starting aromatic tears from the green pine beams, Tommy led Johnson into one of the larger openings, and with a sense of satisfaction threw himself panting upon its rocky floor.  Here and there the grateful dampness was condensed in quiet pools of water, or in a monotonous and soothing drip from the rocks above.  Without lay the staring sunlight,—­colorless, clarified, intense.

For a few moments they lay resting on their elbows in blissful contemplation of the heat they had escaped.  “Wot do you say,” said Johnson, slowly, without looking at his companion, but abstractly addressing himself to the landscape beyond,—­“wot do you say to two straight games fur one thousand dollars?”

“Make it five thousand,” replied Tommy, reflectively, also to the landscape, “and I’m in.”

“Wot do I owe you now?” said Johnson, after a lengthened silence.