Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-08-25

she hung about him, laughing and talking.
And since the youthful tinge of abundant
health was in her c~oloring, the CLEAN of bronze
in her heavy shining hair, her evident prefer
ence for the strangers society found response.
Late that evening, half aroused from deep
sleep, small Jem heard the voice of the man
in charge raised in argument with his mother:
"You say that you don't like it here, that the
women is uppish with you-why d'you stay?
I always say: When you only have one
life to live, have a good time while you can!
. What? . This boy? . If that's
all you've got to bother you, you're in luck
=. That woman who's husband keeps the
store.l be glad to get Jem-" There fol-
lowed a confused tumble Of detached directions
concerning an early departure. And when,
shortly after dawn, Jem awakened, it was to
find the cabin deserted, his mother gone; the
fascinating strangers lure of riding forth to
new untroubed fields, upon a camels back, had
been too much for Meg Brown to resist.
What became of her, her son never learned.
WiStfully he wondered why, If she had gone
toward the mountains, she had not taken him
along. But the settlement was not disturbed
again by her.
THE next years were busy, uneventful ones
for Jem Brown. The man In charge of
the camel train proved himself to be an ex-
pert in passing snap judgment; the store
keepers wife took immediate and aff%ectionate
charge of the little boy-and never regretted
it. Jem more than paid his way, carrying
water in pals which increased in size with his
own growth; running endless errands upon
willing feet; planting and wedding Mrs. Smiths
vegetable garden and helping her in the
kitchen; working behind the counter of the
Store-but always, when he had a little time
to himself, he went out beyond the edge of the
town to stare, hungry-eyed, toward the noun
tains trimming the wide valley.
He was 10 when an epidemic of typhoid
carried of the Smiths within two days of each
other and left him, without ties or funds, to
face the future. His foster fathers partner
urged him to stay on in the store, offered in
ducements, but Jem was not to be beguiled:
reStlessness had overtaken him. Its gettin'
crowded-like here; too many folks" Uncon-
sciously he made a gesture toward the rain
bow-tinted mountain peaks swinging up
through the bright air under a sky of inef-
fable blue. Longs the Smiths was alive an
wanted me. I figered I owed it to EN- to stay.
But now they've went, you oughta see that I
got to be a-movin' toward the hills!" ex-
planned Jem Brown, querulously.
For several years, he drifted; clerking in re-
mote stores and trading posts, driving mail and
stage coaches, working about the mines. All
through the West during those strenuous days
the talk and fervor of gold waxed as steadily
persistent as the Tilt OF wind through the pines.
Jem Brown, drifting with ebb and flow, clerk
ing behind counters at which prospectors
bought their coffee and bacon, swinging his
whip from the drivers seat of stage coaches,
listened carefully to the unceasing talk of lodes
and strikes, of faults and contacts. Pocket
hunting for small rich deposits of ore near the
earths surface was, he early learned, the most
possible and profitable form of gold mining
for an amateur without capital; thoughtfully
he studied the rules for this endeavor until the
day when, having achieved a small surplus, he
babe farewell to the settlements and went on
his own account toward the mountains.
His progress was a leisurely business of work.
ing down the ranges; in time he covered a sur
prisingly large area of wandering, became
impervious to weather or hardship, lived almost
entirely off the land. AS the years went by,
he found walls and a roof increasingly unbear-
able, was happy only when he was among the
wind-tilted cedars of the high country or pam
ming out gravel in the rocky shadows Of some
mountain stream; inevitably, with SO much
looking, he made occasional finds which were
always more than sufficient to supply his few
needs.
1t was after one of these profitable finds that,
journeying down toward the settlement with his
ore, he fell in with other prospectors and heard
the new talk OF a railroad over which the first
transcontinenta train was soon to make its
triumphant progress. The whole account was so
amazing and Incredible that Jem Brown deter
mined to see it for himself: laboriouSly he
notched of on a stick the number of days which
would ensue before the great event.
THROUGH some error in his checking sys-
tenn he arrived at the nearest railroad town
a day late; the epoch-making train had passed,
but reliable witnesses testified to having seen