THE CAMP OF ELAM, THE WOLFER.
"I aint got any business to be digging around here," said the stranger, laying down his rifle and picking up his coat. "We'll go back and get your gun, Tender-foot. How far is that pocket from here?"
"Why, it is a two-weeks' journey," said Tom, who suddenly became aware that he would have to go over that long tramp again. "I never could find my way back there in the world."
"Who sent you into the mountains to dig for my nugget?"
"Your nugget?"
"Them's my very words, stranger."
"Why, who are you?"
"I am Elam Storm, the man who lost the nugget twenty years ago, and who intends to have it back if he has to kill every man this side of the country you came from; and where's that?"
Tom, who had arisen from his rock at the same time the stranger began to put on his coat, stared fixedly at the speaker, and then sat down again. So this was Elam Storm, the man who had a better right to the nugget than anybody else in the world! He was a boy, not more than nineteen or twenty years of age, but he had a face on him which expressed the utmost resolution. And he had the physical power, too, to carry out his determination, for, as he moved around his camp, putting away his tools where he could readily find them, he showed muscles which said that it would not be a safe piece of business for anyone to interfere with that nugget.
"Where did you come from, I asked you?"