Jeffard accepted the alternative, and constituted himself bearward in ordinary to the half-crazed son of the wilderness. He saw difficulties ahead, and the event proved that he did not overestimate them. What a half-intoxicated man, bent upon becoming wholly intoxicated, may do to make thorny the path of a self-constituted guardian Garvin did that night. At the hotel he scandalized the not too curious clerk, and became the centre of an appreciative group in the rotunda what time Jeffard was pleading the mitigating circumstances with the hesitant deputy proprietor. In the midst of the plea, when Jeffard had consented to assume all responsibility for his companion's vagaries, Garvin broke cover in the direction of the bar-room, followed by a tail of thirsty ones.
"You say you know him?" said the clerk tentatively.
"Know him? Why, yes; he is my partner. We are just in from the range, and he has struck it rich. It's a little too much for him just now, but he'll quiet down after a bit. He is one of the best fellows alive, when he's sober; and this is the first time I've ever seen him in liquor. Two drinks of bad whiskey did it."
"Two drinks and a surfeit of good luck," laughed the clerk. "Well, we'll take him; but you must keep him out of the way. He'll be crazy drunk in less than an hour. Been to supper?"
"No."
"Better have it sent to your room. He isn't fit to go to the dining-room."
"All right; have a bell-boy ready, and I'll knock him down and drag him out, if I can."
That was easier said than done. Jeffard found the foolish one in the bar-room, drinking ad libitum, and holding forth to a circle of interested hearers. Garvin had evidently been recounting the history of the abandoned claim, and one of the listeners, a hawk-faced man, with shifty black eyes, was endeavoring to draw him aside. He succeeded just as Jeffard thrust his way into the circle, and the self-elected bearwarden caught the whispered question and its answer.
"You say you located her two years ago?" queried the hawk-faced one.
"No; that's the joke o' the whole shootin'-match,—thess like I was a-tellin' ye." Garvin's speech ran back to its native Tennessee idiom at the bidding of intoxication. "She ain't nev' been located yit; and if it hadn't 'a' been for that derned little sharp-eyed pardner o' mine"—