“‘Well, well,’ says I, ‘that beats anything I ever heard of. But,’ I asked, ‘how did you make out to git a hole through it at last?’
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘I’ll tell ye. A man over the hill yonder was down here to the ranch ’tother day looking at the stone, and he told the Boss to bring it over to his ranch and he would drill a hole through it for him. So we took it over thar and he did it. You see, he has got on his ranch a real knowin’ sort of mule, who’s always willin’ to do anythin’ you want done, if he can do it. So the rancher made the stone fast to a tree behind the mule, fastened a drill to the mule’s hind foot, and then begun to tickle the mule behind his ear with a long straw, and in about three minutes he drilled a hole right square through the middle of the stone.’
“Then I up and told him what that stone was and the reason why they couldn’t grind an axe on it, and showed him the cross on the inside of it, and how it was marked from the cross on the inside of the cover of the bake-oven.
“The chap who had told me all about drilling the hole through it, turned his eye up towards me and remarked that he thought I had better be goin’ pretty soon, for the Boss might be comin’ down that way. I asked him why? He said there was a notice jest above thar on the fence that no old Forty-niners were allowed to come about on the ranch. I asked him the reason why, and he said that he couldn’t exactly tell what the reason was, but said he (the Boss) was an old Forty-niner hisself and maybe he could tell me. I then asked the chap if he was an old-timer too. He said no, but that he had an aunt who was.
“‘I thought so,’ said I.
“Well, just then there come walking down towards the cabin a large, heavy-built, gray-headed man, the boss of the ranch, as they informed me. He had, as I thought, a familiar look, and as he came nearer, Jim, blamed if there wasn’t that corkscrew! Yes, sure enough, ’twas our old pard, Buckeye.
“He knew me at once, and we spent nearly half a day in talking about old-times, and enjoyed a jolly laugh over that grindstone. He has a fine ranch; lots of fruit, as well as a very smart-looking woman for a wife, and four or five children.
“He tried to persuade me to take up a piece of land near him, get married and live like white folks.
“But I told him that I was too old to start into an arrangement of that kind now, and should continue in the occupation of mining the balance of my life.”