The First Stages

For a month Bud worked and forced himself to cheerfulness, and tried to
forget. Sometimes it was easy enough, but there were other times when
he must get away by himself and walk and walk, with his rifle over his
shoulder as a mild pretense that he was hunting game. But if he brought
any back camp it was because the game walked up and waited to be shot;
half the time Bud did not know where he was going, much less whether
there were deer within ten rods or ten miles.

During those spells of heartsickness he would sit all the evening and
smoke and stare at some object which his mind failed to register. Cash
would sit and watch him furtively; but Bud was too engrossed with his
own misery to notice it. Then, quite unexpectedly, reaction would come
and leave Bud in a peace that was more than half a torpid refusal of his
mind to worry much over anything.

He worked then, and talked much with Cash, and made plans for the
development of their mine. In that month they had come to call it a
mine, and they had filed and recorded their claim, and had drawn up an
agreement of partnership in it. They would "sit tight" and work on it
through the winter, and when spring came they hoped to have something
tangible upon which to raise sufficient capital to develop it properly.
Or, times when they had done unusually well with their sandbank, they
would talk optimistically about washing enough gold out of that claim to
develop the other, and keep the title all in their own hands.