“Emily went into the dance hall, and didn’t like it. She decided to quit and buy an interest in a claim. Bill wrote her to come on up, and he thought he could get my consent to selling her a third interest in our claim.
“She came up. I’ll never forget how Emily looked when I first saw her in our cabin. I looked at her, and fell head over heels in love with her.
“We’d been working hard. Our nerves were raw. I cussed Bill for bringing a good girl into the rough mining country. Bill told me to mind my own business. One word led to another, and, after two days, we weren’t speaking. Emily tried to patch things up. The more she tried, the worse things got.
“It wasn’t real cold yet, although there was frost in the air, and it was commencing to get dark. You know, it’s light all night up there during the summer. Bill and I had moved out, and let Emily have the cabin. We slept out back, on balsam boughs — sleeping together for warmth, and neither one of us speaking. We woke up one morning, and found Emily gone. She’d left a note, saying that she saw it wouldn’t work out, and she was on her way, that we weren’t to try to follow.
“That didn’t keep us from trying to follow. It didn’t do us any good. We couldn’t locate her. We came back to the claim, and went back to mining. Bill wanted to tear my throat out, and I wanted to tear his out. Then, one day we struck it rich. We stood and stared at each other over the big pile of gold, and Bill said, ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Emily would have had a share in this.’ I called him a fighting name, and we mixed all over the place. Neither of us won. I was older and more solid. He was younger and faster. When we couldn’t fight any more, we went into the cabin and put cold water on our faces. Then we went out and grubbed out more gold. We had an awful pile of it.
“That night Bill decide to kill me. I read it in his eyes. He figured that with me dead, he could take all of the gold and go get Emily. He’d sensed by that time that she cared more for me than she did for him.
“We had a revolver and a rifle. I stuck the rifle down my pants leg and smuggled it out of the cabin when I went out to get wood. I left it where it would be handy. I was watching Bill like a hawk.
“About eight o’clock that night, it happened. He’d been drinking pretty heavy, and, all of a sudden, he straightened up and threw the whiskey bottle to one side. I read murder in his eyes. I think he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t talk. He twisted his lips, and that was all. I was headed for the door by the time he’d raised the gun. Remember, I’d been waiting for just that play.
“Bill was fast. He shot twice, and missed both times. I ran around the cabin, and he after me. I had enough of a head start to keep the cabin between me and him. I grabbed the rifle, and shot.
“There I was, with a dead partner, out in the middle of the north country, a claim that was lousy with gold, and winter coming on. I knew it was a pocket. I knew it might play out tomorrow or next day or the next week, or, maybe, next season. But it was a pocket. If I left the claim to go and report to the authorities, and some prospector came along, he’d clean out the gold.