"THE GIANT SAT DOWN WITH AN EXPLOSIVE GRUNT, AND HARRY STOOD OVER, SCARCELY PANTING, REVOLVER DANGLING IN HAND"
"Cock-a-doodle-do!" jeered the giant. "Mebbe I picked up this rock here an' mebbe I picked it up somewheres else. But I drop it when I get ready. You crow mighty loud for a young rooster without any spurs."
The giant was standing confidently agrin, resting at ease on one leg, his hand on his hip—but he did not know Harry. With a single jump Harry had reached him, quicker than the eye could follow had jerked the revolver from its scabbard and at the same time with a twist of the foot had knocked loose the propping leg. The giant sat down with an explosive grunt, and Harry stood over, scarcely panting, revolver dangling in hand.
"We wear our spurs on the inside, like a cat's claws," he said. "Now you sit there till you drop that piece of rock."
But the giant looked so ugly and menacing, as he glared about, that Terry flew to the cabin for the shot-gun. He was back with it in a jiffy—and the giant was already slowly rising to his feet. He had dropped the piece of rock.
"'Tisn't wuth sheddin' blood for," he grunted. "Your hull property isn't wuth the lead in a bullet. But I admit you did for me mighty clever. Where'd you l'arn that trick?"
"We're as full of tricks as you are," retorted Harry. "Here's your gun. You needn't keep him covered, Terry. He's going."
"Then you refuse our offer, do you?"
"Yes. You can't buy even the privilege of walking across this land for a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars."
"All right. You can squat here till you starve an' dry up, then. Mebbe you have the trick o' livin' on nothin', but I doubt it. I'd like to know that wrestlin' trip, though—I'll give you an ounce o' dust to show me."
"No, you can't buy that, either," laughed Harry.
"That preacher feller gone away?" queried the giant, with a jerk of the head toward the True Blue claim.
"Yes," said Harry, shortly. "He's quit."
With a calculating glance around, the giant stalked off. They watched him go. Harry picked up the piece of rock.
"Wonder what he wanted of this," mused Harry. "It doesn't look any different from lots of the other rock. White quartz, I reckon, with iron rust in it. We could have given him a bushel of the same. He didn't find it lying loose, though. He cracked it off from somewhere. That's a fresh break."
They searched about curiously a minute for the source of the fragment. It was a smooth knob, the size of a large walnut, showing rusty white at the fracture.
"We can't wash rock, anyhow," quoth Terry. "It just clogs up the sluice. We wash the dirt."
"And we can't wash even that now. It seems queer, though, that that outfit would want to buy this claim after saying it's worthless. You didn't want to sell, did you?"
"No," stoutly declared Terry. "Not unless we have to, to pay dad back."
"Not as long as we can sell pies and make day wages, at any rate," added Harry. "There are just as good ways of getting money as digging it out the ground. If those fellows bother us we've tricks for all their legs as fast as they bring 'em over." He stuffed the piece of rock into his pocket. "I'll keep this for luck," he said.
Harry alertly started in on preparations for his pie-baking; he had hopes of enlisting other customers than Pat. Terry shouldered spade and pick, and trudged off to help Pat.
He found Pat much excited.
"Have ye heard the grand news? No? Why, sure, the great editor man, Horace Grayley, be comin' to the diggin's! He's on his way already—him an' other cilibrated citizens all the way from New York. The boys are arrangin' a rayciption for 'em tomorrow; an' b' gorry, 'tis mesilf will have the honor o' lettin' the great Grayley, who be the editor o' the New York Tribyune, wash the gold with his own hands from this very pit. Faith, if Oi don't make his pans rich for him my name's not Pat Casey."
When that evening Terry, wet and dirty and tired, went home, the word of the approach of Editor Horace Greeley and party had aroused much interest through the gulch.
He found everything ship-shape but quiet at the cabin, where Harry had baked several pies and a batch of bread and hung out some washing. A sign, of wrapping paper and charcoal lettering, now announced:
GREGORY GULCH BAKERY
Apple Pie
Bread, Etc.
Harry Revere & Co.