“Well, a hiatus is a sort of vacancy between one something and another something. Do you get that? There came a hiatus in my memory—a sort of chink—and my name dropped out through that chink. Find it for me, and I’ll give you good money. So long as I couldn’t remember my own, I’ve taken one that everybody knows and everybody can remember. Call me Uncle Samuel.”
He looked at the flag again.
“N-n-not Uncle Sus-Sam?”
“The same. I see that you recognize the name; so, of course, you can’t forget it. I’m Uncle Sam, and the flag up there is my emblem. What can’t be done under the folds of that flag there ain’t no use trying to do. For which reason I know that I’ll get blood out of this turnip.”
Persimmon Pete turned away.
“Crazy as a bedbug,” he reported to the men who were awaiting him. “He calls himself Uncle Sam, and says that the flag is his emblem.”
Before the day ended the stranger in the tenderfoot’s cabin had been given another name by the amused people of Blossom Range; they called him the Fool of Folly Mountain.
As a usual thing, little attention was paid to the men who delved here and there about the town in search of the elusive metal on which the town based its prosperity. Miners and prospectors came and they went, and no one noted either their coming or going, save the men who sold them grub and outfits.
But it was different with Uncle Sam; because he had given a queer name and achieved another, and because he professed to be able to get gold where none was believed to exist.