“I’m going to ask you to do me a favor, stranger, but only in case I don’t come back. I intend to, but”—he glanced instinctively out of the window—“it’s no sure thing I will.
“My partner has a mother and a sister—here’s the address, though it’s twelve years old. If anything happens to me, I want you to promise that you’ll hunt them up. Give them this old letter and the picture and this letter, here, of mine. This is half the gold dust—our season’s work.” He placed a heavy canvas sample sack in Sprudell’s hand. “Say that Slim sent it; that although they might not think it because he did not write, that just the same he thought an awful lot of them.
“I’ve told them in my letter about the placer here—it’s theirs, the whole of it, if I don’t come back. See that it’s recorded; women don’t understand about such things. And be sure the assessment work’s kept up. In the letter, there, I’ve given them my figures as to how the samples run. Some day there’ll be found a way to work it on a big scale, and it’ll pay them to hold on. That’s all, I guess.” He looked deep into Sprudell’s eyes. “You’ll do it?”
“As soon as I get out.”
“I’d just about come back and haunt you if you lied.”
There were no heroics when he left them; he simply fastened on his pack and went.
“Don’t try to hunt me if I stay too long,” was all he said to Uncle Bill at parting. “If there’s any way of getting there, I can make it just as well alone.”
It was disappointing to Sprudell—nothing like the Western plays at tragic moments; no long handshakes and heart-breaking speeches of farewell from the “rough diamonds.”
“S’ long,” said Uncle Bill.