The Yellow-Leg

While seated in the office of the Hinds House, with his eyes rolled to the ceiling, listening in well-feigned rapture to "Rippling Waves" on the cabinet organ, and other numbers rendered singly and ensemble by the Musical Snows, Mr. Dill in reality was wondering by what miracle he was going to carry out Sprudell's specific instructions to keep his errand a secret.

"The great, white light which plays upon a throne" is not more searching than that which follows the movements of a possible Live One in a moribund mining camp, and, in spite of his puttees, Ore City hoped against hope that some benefit might be derived from the stranger's presence.

Dill's orders were to get upon the ground which had been worked in a primitive way by a fellow named Bruce Burt--now deceased he was told--and relocate it in Sprudell's name together with seven other contiguous claims, using the name of dummy locators which would give Sprudell control of one hundred and sixty acres by doing the assessment work upon one. Also Dill was instructed to run preliminary survey lines if possible and lose no time in submitting estimates upon the most feasible means of washing the ground.

Seated in his comfortable office in Spokane, Mr. Dill had foreseen no great difficulties in the way of earning his ample fee, but it seemed less ample after one hundred miles by stage over three summits, and a better understanding of conditions. Between the stage-driver's sweeping denunciations of road-supervisors in general and long and picturesque castigations of the local road supervisor in particular, Mr. Dill had adroitly extracted the information that the twenty-mile trail to the river was the worst known, and snow-line blazes left by "Porcupine Jim" were, in summer, thirty feet in the air.