Flip and Found at Blazing Star | Page 4

inscription to his rather peculiar nickname would have been a
perennial source of playful comment in a camp that made no allowance
for sentimental memories. He slipped the glittering little hoop into his
pocket, and thoughtfully returned to his cabin.
Two hours later, when the long, straggling procession, which every
morning wended its way to Blazing Star Gulch,--the seat of mining
operations in the settlement,--began to move, Cass saw fit to interrogate
his fellows. "Ye didn't none on ye happen to drop anything round yer
last night?" he asked, cautiously.
"I dropped a pocketbook containing government bonds and some other
securities, with between fifty and sixty thousand dollars," responded
Peter Drummond, carelessly; "but no matter, if any man will return a
few autograph letters from foreign potentates that happened to be in
it,--of no value to anybody but the owner,--he can keep the money.
Thar's nothin' mean about me," he concluded, languidly.
This statement, bearing every evidence of the grossest mendacity, was
lightly passed over, and the men walked on with the deepest gravity.

"But hev you?" Cass presently asked of another.
"I lost my pile to Jack Hamlin at draw-poker, over at Wingdam last
night," returned the other, pensively, "but I don't calkilate to find it
lying round loose."
Forced at last by this kind of irony into more detailed explanation, Cass
confided to them his discovery, and produced his treasure. The result
was a dozen vague surmises,--only one of which seemed to be popular,
and to suit the dyspeptic despondency of the party,--a despondency
born of hastily masticated fried pork and flapjacks. The ring was
believed to have been dropped by some passing "road agent" laden with
guilty spoil.
"Ef I was you," said Drummond, gloomily, "I wouldn't flourish that yer
ring around much afore folks. I've seen better men nor you strung up a
tree by Vigilantes for having even less than that in their possession."
"And I wouldn't say much about bein' up so d----d early this morning,"
added an even more pessimistic comrade; "it might look bad before a
jury."
With this the men sadly dispersed, leaving the innocent Cass with the
ring in his hand, and a general impression on his mind that he was
already an object of suspicion to his comrades,--an impression, it is
hardly necessary to say, they fully intended should be left to rankle in
his guileless bosom.
Notwithstanding Cass's first hopeful superstition the ring did not seem
to bring him nor the camp any luck. Daily the "clean up" brought the
same scant rewards to their labors, and deepened the sardonic gravity
of Blazing Star. But, if Cass found no material result from his treasure,
it stimulated his lazy imagination, and, albeit a dangerous and seductive
stimulant, at least lifted him out of the monotonous grooves of his
half-careless, half-slovenly, but always self-contented camp life.
Heeding the wise caution of his comrades, he took the habit of wearing
the ring only at night. Wrapped in his blanket, he stealthily slipped the
golden circlet over his little finger, and, as he averred, "slept all the

better for it." Whether it ever evoked any warmer dream or vision
during those calm, cold, virgin-like spring nights, when even the moon
and the greater planets retreated into the icy blue, steel-like firmament,
I cannot say. Enough that this superstition began to be colored a little
by fancy, and his fatalism somewhat mitigated by hope. Dreams of this
kind did not tend to promote his efficiency in the communistic labors of
the camp, and brought him a self- isolation that, however gratifying at
first, soon debarred him the benefits of that hard practical wisdom
which underlaid the grumbling of his fellow workers.
"I'm dog-goned," said one commentator, "ef I don't believe that Cass is
looney over that yer ring he found. Wears it on a string under his shirt."
Meantime, the seasons did not wait the discovery of the secret. The red
pools in Blazing Star highway were soon dried up in the fervent June
sun and riotous night wind of those altitudes. The ephemeral grasses
that had quickly supplanted these pools and the chocolate-colored mud,
were as quickly parched and withered. The footprints of spring became
vague and indefinite, and were finally lost in the impalpable dust of the
summer highway.
In one of his long, aimless excursions, Cass had penetrated a thick
undergrowth of buckeye and hazel, and found himself quite
unexpectedly upon the high road to Red Chief's Crossing. Cass knew
by the lurid cloud of dust that hid the distance, that the up coach had
passed. He had already reached that stage of superstition when the most
trivial occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the
mystery of his treasure. His eyes had mechanically fallen to the ground