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260 fifty dollars were all expended, then got a situation as "assistant bull-whacker" on an up train, and made his way up into the mountains to Fiddletown, where he came across a friend, who took him into partnership in a placer gold-claim, which at the moment did not promise largely. They "struck it rich," for a wonder, in two weeks sold out for a "big stake," and started for San Francisco. On the way down the river, on the steamer, Bill was induced to take a hand in a little friendly game of draw-poker, just to pass away the time, and succeeded not only in passing away the time, but also with it all his own money, and all his confiding partner's share as well. In San Francisco he met with various adventures, finding temporary employment in a dozen different kinds of business, only to be thrown out of each in turn through some unfortunate occurrence, and find himself "dead broke" every time. When the Frazer River excitement broke out, he went up there, and came back "busted." Then he joined in the mid-winter rush over the Sierra Nevada to the newly-found Washoe silver mines, and found his way back again in the spring as poverty-stricken as ever. Then he drifted southward, fished for sharks, and gathered abalones at San Pedro, and for a time made himself generally useless on a stock-ranch. The Arizona gold excitement of 1862-63 took him across the desert to the Colorado River. In the first camp he struck on the eastern side of the Colorado River, he set to work with a will to secure a valuable quartz claim—everybody was hunting up and locating quartz claims at that time. He would