Digging for Gold

“It’s true, every word of it.”

“How did he make it?”

“Mining, I believe. He’s bought the Ezra Jones place, and is going to put up a nice house.”

Among the most interested listeners was Grant Colburn. His color went and came, and he seemed excited.

“How long was Mr. Heywood in California,” he asked.

“About a year. He was gone a good deal longer, for he went across the plains, and it took four months. He came back across the Isthmus.”

“I would like to go California,” said Grant thoughtfully.

“You go to California! A boy like you!” repeated Mrs. Bartlett scornfully. “What could you do?”

“I could make more money than I do here,” answered Grant with spirit.

“I reckon you won’t go in a hurry,” said Seth Tarbox composedly. “You haven’t money enough to get you twenty-five miles, and I s’pose it’s as much as two thousand miles from Iowa to Californy.”

Grant felt that there was a good deal of truth in his step-father’s words, but the idea had found lodgment in his brain, and was likely to remain there.

“I mean to go sometime!” he said resolutely.

“You’d better start right off after dinner!” said Rodney in a sneering tone.

CHAPTER III

A TERRIBLE RESPONSIBILITY

“Grant, you may go over to the other farm and ask Luke Weldon for the pitchfork he borrowed of me last week. There’s no knowing how long he would keep it if I didn’t send for it.”

“All right, sir.”

“Rodney can walk with you if he wants to.”

“Thank you,” said Rodney, shrugging his shoulders, “but I don’t care to walk a mile and a half for a pitchfork. I’ll go part way, though, to the village.”

The two boys started out together. Rodney looked askance at his companion’s poor clothes.

“You’re foolish not to take the suit I offered you,” he said. “Its a good deal better than yours.”

“I presume it is.”

“Then why don’t you want it?”

“Because it will prevent your grandfather buying me a new one.”

“Have you asked him?”

“Yes, I asked him this morning.”

“What did he say?”

“That he would buy a new one for himself, and have his best suit cut down for me.”

Rodney laughed.

“You’d look like a fright,” he said.

“I think so myself,” assented Grant with a smile.

“You’d better take mine than his. Grandfather isn’t much like a dude in dress.”

“No; he tells me that I dress as well as he.”

“So you do, nearly. However, it does not make much difference how an old man like him dresses.”

Rodney rather approved of his grandfather’s scanty outlay on dress, for it would enable him to leave more money to his mother and himself.

“Do you know how old grandfather is?” asked Rodney.

“I believe he is sixty-nine.”

“That’s pretty old. He won’t live many years longer probably. Then the property will come to mother and me.”

“Shall you come to live on the farm?”

“Not much. Mother says she’ll sell both farms, and then we may go to Chicago to live.”

Grant did not like Mr. Tarbox, but he was rather disgusted to hear his grandson speculate so coolly about his death.

“Don’t you think grandfather is failing?” continued Rodney.

“I don’t know that he is,” answered Grant coldly.

“Mother thinks he’s got kidney disease. Old men are very apt to have that trouble.”

“I never heard him complain of being sick.”

By this time the two boys had reached the village.

“I think I’ll drop into the drug store,” said Rodney. “They keep cigarettes there, don’t they?”

“I believe so.”

“Mother don’t like me to smoke, but I do it on the sly. I’ll give you a cigarette, if you want one,” he said, in an unusual fit of generosity.

“Thank you, but I don’t smoke.”