"Glad to meet you, William," said the little man, and ever afterward he called the boy William. "Anybody that I find with Jim, here, has got on 'im the stamp an' seal o' high approval. I don't ask your name, whar you come from or why you're here, or whar you're goin', but I take you fur a frien' o' Jim's, an' so just 'bout all right. Now put 'er thar."
He grinned a wide grin and extended a wide palm, into which Will put his to have it enclosed at once in a grasp so mighty that he was convinced his first impression about the man being made of steel was correct. He uttered an exclamation and Giant Tom dropped his hand at once.
"I never do that to a feller more than once," he said, "an' it's always the first time I meet him. Even then I don't do it 'less I'm sure he's all right, an' I'm goin' to like 'im. It's jest my way o' puttin' a stamp on 'im to show that he's passed Tom Bent's ordeal, an' is good fur the best the world has to offer. Now, William, you're one o' us."
He smiled so engagingly that Will was compelled to laugh, and he felt, too, that he had a new and powerful friend.
"That's right, laugh," said Giant Tom. "You take it the way a feller orter, an' you an' me are goin' to be mighty good pards. An' that bein' settled I want to know from you, Jim Boyd, what are you doin' in my valley."
"Your valley, Giant! Why, you never saw it before," said the hunter.
"What's that got to do with it? I wuz comin' here an' any place that I'm goin' to come to out here in the wilderness is mine, o' course."
"Coming here, I suppose, to hunt for gold! And you've been hunting for it for fifteen years, you've trod along thousands and thousands of miles and never found a speck of it yet."
The little man laughed joyously.
"That's true," he said. "I've worked years an' years an' I never yet had a particle o' luck. But a dry spell, no matter how long, is always broke some time or other by a rain, an' when my luck does come, it's goin' to bust all over my face. Gold will just rain on me. I'll stand in it knee-deep an' then shoulder deep, an' then right up to my mouth."