The next instant the stranger felt the miner’s hand grip his wrist.  The struggle was now for the revolver.  Each man strove to turn it against the other’s body.  The smoke in the hole was clearing.  The stranger, lying on his back, was beginning to see dimly.  But suddenly he was blinded by a handful of dirt deliberately flung into his eyes by his antagonist.  In that moment of shock his grip on the revolver was broken.  In the next moment he felt a smashing darkness descend upon his brain, and in the midst of the darkness even the darkness ceased.

But the pocket-miner fired again and again, until the revolver was empty.  Then he tossed it from him and, breathing heavily, sat down on the dead man’s legs.

The miner was sobbing and struggling for breath.  “Measly skunk!” he panted; “a-campin’ on my trail an’ lettin’ me do the work, an’ then shootin’ me in the back!”

He was half crying from anger and exhaustion.  He peered at the face of the dead man.  It was sprinkled with loose dirt and gravel, and it was difficult to distinguish the features.

“Never laid eyes on him before,” the miner concluded his scrutiny.  “Just a common an’ ordinary thief, damn him!  An’ he shot me in the back!  He shot me in the back!”

He opened his shirt and felt himself, front and back, on his left side.

“Went clean through, and no harm done!” he cried jubilantly.  “I’ll bet he aimed right all right, but he drew the gun over when he pulled the trigger—­the cuss!  But I fixed ’m!  Oh, I fixed ’m!”

His fingers were investigating the bullet-hole in his side, and a shade of regret passed over his face.  “It’s goin’ to be stiffer’n hell,” he said.  “An’ it’s up to me to get mended an’ get out o’ here.”

He crawled out of the hole and went down the hill to his camp.  Half an hour later he returned, leading his pack-horse.  His open shirt disclosed the rude bandages with which he had dressed his wound.  He was slow and awkward with his left-hand movements, but that did not prevent his using the arm.

The bight of the pack-rope under the dead man’s shoulders enabled him to heave the body out of the hole.  Then he set to work gathering up his gold.  He worked steadily for several hours, pausing often to rest his stiffening shoulder and to exclaim: 

“He shot me in the back, the measly skunk!  He shot me in the back!”

When his treasure was quite cleaned up and wrapped securely into a number of blanket-covered parcels, he made an estimate of its value.

“Four hundred pounds, or I’m a Hottentot,” he concluded.  “Say two hundred in quartz an’ dirt—­that leaves two hundred pounds of gold.  Bill!  Wake up!  Two hundred pounds of gold!  Forty thousand dollars!  An’ it’s yourn—­all yourn!”

He scratched his head delightedly and his fingers blundered into an unfamiliar groove.  They quested along it for several inches.  It was a crease through his scalp where the second bullet had ploughed.