The whistler was now very near, though hidden from sight by the bushes, and he was trilling forth old airs of home that made the pulses in the lad's throat beat hard.

"It's Giant Tom. There's no other such in the world," repeated Boyd more to himself than to Will. "In another minute you'll see him. You can hear him now brushing past the bushes. Ah, there he is! G.o.d bless him!"

The figure of an extraordinary man now came into view. He was not more than five feet tall, nor was he particularly broad for his height. He was just the opposite of a giant in size, but there was something about him that suggested the power of a giant. He had a wonderfully quick and light step, and it was Will's first impression that he was made of steel, instead of flesh and blood. His face, shaven smoothly, told little of his age. He was dressed in weather-beaten brown, rifle on shoulder, and two mules, loaded with the usual packs and miner's tools, followed him in single file and with sure step.

Will's heart warmed at once to the little man who continued to whistle forth a volume of clear song, and whose face was perhaps the happiest he had ever seen. Boyd stepped suddenly from the shielding brushwood and extended his hand.

"Tom Bent," he said, "put 'er there!"

"Thar she is," said Giant Tom, placing his palm squarely in Boyd's.

"My young friend, Mr. William Clarke," said the hunter, nodding at the lad, "and this is Mr. Thomas Bent, better known to me and others as Giant Tom."

"Glad to meet you, William," said the little man, and ever afterward he called the boy William. "Anybody that I find with Jim, here, has got on 'im the stamp an' seal o' high approval. I don't ask your name, whar you come from or why you're here, or whar you're goin', but I take you fur a frien' o' Jim's, an' so just 'bout all right. Now put 'er thar."

He grinned a wide grin and extended a wide palm, into which Will put his to have it enclosed at once in a grasp so mighty that he was convinced his first impression about the man being made of steel was correct. He uttered an exclamation and Giant Tom dropped his hand at once.

"I never do that to a feller more than once," he said, "an' it's always the first time I meet him. Even then I don't do it 'less I'm sure he's all right, an' I'm goin' to like 'im. It's jest my way o' puttin' a stamp on 'im to show that he's pa.s.sed Tom Bent's ordeal, an' is good fur the best the world has to offer. Now, William, you're one o' us."

He smiled so engagingly that Will was compelled to laugh, and he felt, too, that he had a new and powerful friend.

"That's right, laugh," said Giant Tom. "You take it the way a feller orter, an' you an' me are goin' to be mighty good pards. An' that bein'

settled I want to know from you, Jim Boyd, what are you doin' in my valley."

"Your valley, Giant! Why, you never saw it before," said the hunter.

"What's that got to do with it? I wuz comin' here an' any place that I'm goin' to come to out here in the wilderness is mine, o' course."

"Coming here, I suppose, to hunt for gold! And you've been hunting for it for fifteen years, you've trod along thousands and thousands of miles and never found a speck of it yet."

The little man laughed joyously.

"That's true," he said. "I've worked years an' years an' I never yet had a particle o' luck. But a dry spell, no matter how long, is always broke some time or other by a rain, an' when my luck does come, it's goin' to bust all over my face. Gold will just rain on me. I'll stand in it knee-deep an' then shoulder deep, an' then right up to my mouth."

"You haven't changed a bit," said Boyd, grinning also. "You're the same Giant Tom, a real giant in strength and courage, that I've met off and on through the years. It's been a long time since I first saw you."

"It was in Californy in '49. I was only fourteen then, but I went out with my uncle in the first rush. Seventeen years I've hunted the yellow stuff, in the streams, in the mountains, all up an' down the coast, in the British territories, an' way back in the Rockies, but I've yet to see its color. Uncle Pete found some, and when he died he left what money he had to me. 'Jest you take it an' keep on huntin', Tom, my boy,'

he said. 'Now an' then I think I've seen traces o' impatience in you.

When you'd been lookin' only six or seven years, an' found nothin', I heard you speak in a tone of disapp'intment, once. Don't you do it ag'in. That ain't the way things are won. It takes sperrit an' patience to be victor'us. Hang on to the job you've set fur yourse'f, an' thirty or forty years from now you'll be sh.o.r.e to reap a full reward, though it might come sooner.' An' here I am, fresh, strong, only a little past thirty, and I kin afford to hunt an' wait for my pay 'bout thirty years more. I've never forgot what Uncle Pete told me just afore he died. A mighty smart man was Uncle Pete, an' he had my future in mind. Don't you think so, young William?"

"Of course," replied Will, looking at him in wonder and admiration. "I don't think a man of your cheerful and patient temperament could possibly fail."

"And maybe his reward will come much sooner than he thinks," said the hunter, glancing at the lad.

Will understood what Boyd meant, and he was much taken with the idea.

The Little Giant seemed to be sent by Providence, but he said nothing, waiting until such time as the hunter thought fit to broach the subject.

"How long have you been here?" asked the Little Giant, looking at the valley with approving eyes.

"Quite a little while," replied Boyd. "It belonged to us two until a few minutes ago, but now it belongs to us three. We've been needing a third man badly, and while I didn't know it, you must have been in my mind all the time."

"An' what do you happen to need me fur, Jim Boyd?"

"We'll let that wait awhile, at least, until we introduce you to our home."

"All right. Patience is my strong suit. Do you mean to say you've got a home here?"

"Certainly."

"Then I'll be your guest until you take me into the pardnership you're talkin' 'bout. Do you know that you two are the first faces o' human bein's that I've seen in two months, an' it gives me a kind o' pleasure to look at you, Jim Boyd, an' young William."

"Come on then to our camp."

He whistled to his two mules, strong, patient animals, and then he whistled on his own account the gayest and most extraordinary variation that Will had ever heard, a medley of airs, clear, pure and birdlike, that would have made the feet of any young man dance to the music. It expressed cheerfulness, hope and the sheer joy of living.

"You could go on the stage and earn fine pay with that whistling of yours," said Will, when he finished.

"Others have told me so, too," said the Little Giant, "but I'll never do it. Do you think I'd forget what Uncle Pete said to me on his dyin' bed, an' get out o' patience? What's a matter o' twenty or thirty years? I'll keep on lookin' an' in the end I'll find plenty o' gold as a matter o'

course. Then I won't have to whistle fur a livin'. I'll hire others to whistle fur me."

"He's got another accomplishment, Will, one that he never brags about,"

said the hunter.

"What is it?"

"I told you once that I was as good a rifle shot as there was in the West, over a range of a million and a half square miles of mountain and plain, but I forgot, for a moment, about one exception. That exception is Giant Tom, here. He has one of the fine repeating rifles like ours, and whether with that or a muzzle loader he's quicker and surer than any other."

The face of Giant Tom turned red through his tan.

"See here, Jim Boyd, I'm a modest man, I'm no boaster, don't be telling wild tales about me to young William. I don't know him yet so well as I do you, an' I vally his good opinion."

"What I say is true every word of it. If his bullet would only carry that far he'd pick off a deer at five miles every time, and you needn't deny it, Giant Tom."

"Well, mebbe thar is some truth in what you say. When the Lord sawed me off a foot, so I'd hev to look up in the faces o' men whenever I talked to 'em, He looked at me an' He felt sorry fur the little feller He'd created. I'll have to make it up to him somehow, He said to Hisself, an'

to he'p me along He give me muscles o' steel, not your cast steel, but your wrought steel that never breaks, then He put a mockin' bird in my throat, an' give me eyes like an eagle's an' nerves o' the steadiest.

Last, He give me patience, the knowin' how to wait years an' years fur what I want, an' lookin' back to it now I think He more than made up fur the foot He sawed off. Leastways I ain't seen yet the man I want to change with, not even with you, Jim Boyd, tall as you think you are, nor with you, young William, for all your red cheeks an' your youth an' your heart full o' hope, though it ain't any fuller than mine."

"Long but mighty interesting," said Boyd. "Now, you can see our wickiup, over there in the open. We use it only when it rains. We'll help you take the packs off your mules and they can go grazing for themselves with our horses. You are not saying much about it, but I imagine that you and the mules, too, are pretty nearly worn out."

"Them's good mules, mighty good mules, but them an' me, I don't mind tellin' it to you, Jim Boyd, won't fight ag'inst restin' an' eatin'

awhile."

"I'll light the fire and warm food for you," said Will. "It's a pleasure for me to do it. Sit down on the log and before you know it I'll have ready for you the finest lake trout into which you ever put your teeth."

"Young William, I accept your invite."

Will quickly had his fire going, and he served not only trout, but bear steaks and hot coffee to the Little Giant, who ate with a tremendous appet.i.te.