Silvertip's Roundup by Max Brand

of his hand. ‘I’ve found it in the ground!’ he said. He was wild with excitement. I asked him if it were real gold. He said he didn’t know but that he’d see if it were good enough to buy a drink with. So he went downtown.”
    Silver nodded. “That’s what killed him, then,” he declared. “When Feeley paid with gold dust, like a fool, the whisper about it came to Christian. He put his men on Feeley’s trail. They found the place where the gold was washed. When Feeley came back to town, they followed him down and killed him so that he couldn’t go back to his diggings. I don’t suppose there’s any doubt about that. It was after the first time that Feeley brought you this gold?”
    â€œIt was the next evening. He went down to the saloon, the Round-up Bar, and Pudge took the dust in payment for drinks, all right. Joe Feeley was half-crazy, when he came back and told me that. He said that he was going to wash a cool million out of the ground and marry me, and all that sort of thing. He was crazy.”
    â€œWhat about you?” asked Silver.
    She shook her head. “Gold is catching,” she said. “I was excited, too. I went to the dance with him in a fever. But I knew all the time that I didn’t want to marry him. After the dance, that night, he wouldn’t wait for the morning. He rolled his blanket and went off in the dark to get back to his cabin. I asked him where the place was where he’d found gold.
    â€œHe liked me, all right, but he didn’t like me well enough to tell me that. He only laughed. ‘You don’t care about the place,’ he said. ‘All you’ll need to care about is the gold that comes out of it. I’m going to buy you. I’m going to put you in one side of a scales and weigh you down with gold that I stack in the other side. Understand that?’ That’s the way he was talking. He was on fire. He told me that money wasn’t money, unless it came out of the ground. He said that it was dirty stuff and there was murder on every penny of it, except what came out of the ground.”
    â€œPoor Feeley,” said Silver. “I’m sorry about him. If I only knew where that claim is — well, I’d be able to find some of Christian’s men there, I suppose. And if I could find the men, I could trail them home, and if I trailed them home, I’d be fairly close to Taxi — if he’s still above ground. Sally, come out and point the way for me. I’m going up to that shanty.”
    â€œIt’ll be hard to find the place where he washed the gold, though,” said the girl. “I’ve been up there three times, since poor Joe was killed. I know the lie of the land, up there, and I’ve searched everywhere. I couldn’t find a trace.”
    She put the gold into the handkerchief, knotted it, and offered it to Silver.
    â€œTake it,” she said. “I don’t want it around me. Whenever I see it on the shelf, I think of poor Joe Feeley’s face laughing and wrinkling up to the eyes. He was hard as steel, but he was a good fellow.”
    Silver made a gesture as though to refuse that gift, but presently he changed his mind and without a word dropped it into his pocket.
    Parade took him swiftly over the flat of the Horseshoe plain and up the slope of the mountain. There were seventeen hands of Parade, but the wild years when he had run free, leading a herd, had made him as wisefooted as a mountain goat. He knew by a glance the rocks that would slide under foot and those which would remain firm. He knew how to zigzag up the steepest slopes and just that throw of the foot, coming downhill, which puts the frog of the hoof against slippery ground. He needed all of these arts before he brought Jim Silver to the cabin.
    It was hardly worthy of the name. It was a mere lean-to that was propped against a rocky bank and it was made of a queer mixture of