For a minute or two Rampike only turned the gold over and over in his hands and said nothing. At last he asked:
"Did you git Cruickshank?"
"No, never saw him," answered Ned.
"Praise the Lord you ain't got everything. I ain't sure as I wouldn't ruther look at him through the back-sights of this here, than find a crik like yourn;" and the old man passed his hand caressingly along the barrel of his "44.70."
"But, say, you look mighty hard set. Have you any grub along with you?"
"Not an ounce of flour, and this is the last of our meat;" and so saying Ned pulled out of his pocket the ration which he had kept for Chance.
"It's pretty lucky that I'm well heeled in the way of provisions, ain't it, else we'd all starve. Wal, come along up to the 'dug-out;'" and so saying he picked up his coat and rifle and led up to the bluff, until all three stood before the door of his winter residence.
Next to the homes of the pre-historic cavemen, and a few rude stone-heaps in which the Caucasian Ossetes live, the "dug-outs" along the Frazer river are the most miserable abodes ever fashioned for themselves by men. And yet these holes in the hill, with doors and roofs aflush with the hillside, are better adapted to resist the intense cold of a British Columbian winter than either frame-shack or log-hut.
"Come right in, lads," said Rampike, putting his foot against the planks which served him for a door, and thus rudely clearing the way for his visitors into a little dark interior with walls and floor of Frazer river mud.
A rough table, a solitary chair, and a kind of bench furnished the hovel somewhat more luxuriously than might have been expected, but unless you took a deep interest in geology the walls and general surroundings in Rampike's reception-room were distinctly crude and unpleasant.