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FLOOD AT BLUE SHANK
By Frank Filson.
"When Dicky Mears was sent West
by his loving and long-suffering par
ent, with his ticket in one pocketand
five thousand dolla"rs-in the other,
and orders- not to come home till he
had made 'his fortune and a man of
himself at the same time, Setango
Gulch spotted a good thing. There
sat Dicky in the White Horse Hote
"What's That!" Yells Ike.
owned by Ike Brown, sipping lemon
ade and talking of his expectations.
" 'You see, boys, I've been kind of
wild,' he says. 'But I've cut out the
drink for good and well, it's this
way.' And he showed us the picture
of a girl with innocent gray eyes and
light, fluffy hair and well, you
know the kind. 'She'll wait a lifetime
for me,' says Dicky. And I allowed
she would.
"He was a good thing, and even
five thousand dollars is worth picking
up, if it can be done easy. Now Ike
Brown had about half a dozen work
ed out placer mines. They were
pocket mines, meaning to say there
wasn't any gold in them except a few
pockets of the metal that had wash
ed down from the mother lode about
the time of the deluge, when the thin
trickle of water that now ran there
had been a roaring stream, and when
they was emptied the gold was gone.
Ike had picked the pockets dry and
then salted them with gold dust fired
from a shotgun for suckers like
Dicky Mears. They were scattered
here and there along the bed. No
body was mean enough to warn
Dicky, and as Ike had got him first
it wouldn't have been gentlemanly to
try to get him away till he was dry.
" 'Though,' says I to myself, 'if it
was me, I'd let him off for three thou
sand, may be, on the price of the
Green Star, for the sake of the girl.'
"Ike only let Dick stay three days
in Setango Gulch, and what he didn't
see in that time was. a wonder. For
instance, when the water carts come
in from Montserrat, fifty miles away,
which was the only way we had to
get the stuff, he thought they carried
kerosene, and his' morning bath,
which was worth twenty-five dollars
a time, made Ike grit his teeth. So
as soon as he could he got him out to
the Green Star, where he left him
with three months' grub and a heap
of dynamite cartridges. 'Stand back
after you've lit the fuse until you hear
the explosion, Dicky,' sa?p Ike. 'You'll
find enough-water to dip up in your
tin basin if you made a hole about the
middle of the bed. Good-bye.'
" 'Good-bye,' says Dicky, in a
dream, and Ike rides home with
Dicky's five thousand dollars in his
pocket.
"Just about three .months later,
when we'd forgotten Dicky, he comes
into Setango, having walked all the
way. Hex hadn't seen the color of
gold.
" 'That's too bad, Dicky,' says Ike.
'Of course, it may be you didn't strike
the vein. Why don't you write home
