"Looks to me, in its crow's nest of chaparral, like the lucky ace of spades," added a man who sat apart contemplating the wax under the nail of his right fore-finger.
The schoolmaster here picked up the ace of hearts, drew out his pencil and figured rapidly.
"There!" he cried, flourishing the card, "I put it an ounce a day for eighteen years, and that is the result." The figures astonished them all. It was decided that the old miser had at least a mule-load of gold in his cabin.
"It is my opinion," said the new Squire, who was small of stature, and consequently insolent and impertinent, "he had ought to be taken up, tried, and hung for killing his pardner in '51."
"The time has run out," said the Coroner, who now came up, adjusting a tall hat to which he was evidently not accustomed; "the time for such cases by the law made and provided has run out, and it is my opinion it can't be did."
Not long after this it was discovered that the Gopher was not at work. Then it came out that he was very ill, and that Old Baboon was seen to enter his cabin.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A NATURAL DEATH.
Early one frosty morning in the Fall following, Old Baboon sat by the door of the only saloon. He held an old bull-dog by a tow-string, and both man and dog were pictures of distress as they shivered from the keen cold wind that came pitching down from the snow-peaks. As a man approached, the man shivered till his teeth chattered, and clutching at the string, looked helplessly over his shoulder at the uncompromising bar-keeper, who had just arisen and opened the door to let out the bad odors of his den.