Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/17



HE quartet, standing together at the far end of the bar, close to the entrance to the dance hall that adjoined it, was a striking one; not so much from any one of them differing widely from the mixed types of the busy mining camp, as in the fact that they made up an unusual combination. Mining, as war, maketh for strange company, but it was seldom that four men, so varying in age, in temperament, appearance, and experience, chummed together.

"The Foursome," Stone had dubbed the shaft that they were slowly sinking in the stubborn dyke of purple porphyry under which, said Skyfields, ran continuously the rich vein of sylvanite, the discovery of which had caused the rush to Skyfields and changed that jumble of jagged peaks into so many human antheaps of never-flagging industry and never-failing hope. And "The Foursome" the camp had dubbed the partners though they had separate names for them as individuals.

There was Jim Stone—dreamer, waster, chased into the higher hills by the results of his own dissipations; 3