“Let me see that little dingus ye had, Kit,” said he—­“that piece o’ gold.”

Carson handed it to him.

“Ye got any more o’ hit, Kit?”

“Plenty!  You can have it if you’ll promise not to tell where it came from, Jim.”

“If I do, Jim Bridger’s a liar, Kit!”

He slipped the nugget into his pocket.  They rode to the head of the train, where Bridger found Wingate and his aids, and presented his friend.  They all, of course, knew of Fremont’s famous scout, then at the height of his reputation, and greeted him with enthusiasm.  As they gathered around him Bridger slipped away.  Searching among the wagons, he at last found Molly Wingate and beckoned her aside with portentous injunctions of secrecy.

In point of fact, a sudden maudlin inspiration had seized Jim Bridger, so that a promise to Kit Carson seemed infinitely less important than a promise to this girl, whom, indeed, with an old man’s inept infatuation, he had worshiped afar after the fashion of white men long gone from society of their kind.  Liquor now made him bold.  Suddenly he reached out a hand and placed in Molly’s palm the first nugget of California gold that ever had come thus far eastward.  Physically heavy it was; of what tremendous import none then could have known.

“I’ll give ye this!” he said.  “An’ I know whar’s plenty more.”

She dropped the nugget because of the sudden weight in her hand; picked it up.

“Gold!” she whispered, for there is no mistaking gold.

“Yes, gold!”

“Where did you get it?”

She was looking over her shoulder instinctively.

“Listen!  Ye’ll never tell?  Ye mustn’t!  I swore to Kit Carson, that give hit to me, I’d never tell no one.  But I’ll set you ahead o’ any livin’ bein’, so maybe some day ye’ll remember old Jim Bridger.

“Yes, hit’s gold!  Kit Carson brung it from Sutter’s Fort, on the Sacramenty, in Californy.  They’ve got it thar in wagonloads.  Kit’s on his way east now to tell the Army!”

“Everyone will know!”

“Yes, but not now!  Ef ye breathe this to a soul, thar won’t be two wagons left together in the train.  Thar’ll be bones o’ womern from here to Californy!”

Wide-eyed, the girl stood, weighing the nugget in her hands.

“Keep hit, Miss Molly,” said Bridger simply.  “I don’t want hit no more.  I only got hit fer a bracelet fer ye, or something.  Good-by.  I’ve got to leave the train with my own wagons afore long an’ head fer my fort.  Ye’ll maybe see me—­old Jim Bridger—­when ye come through.

“Yes, Miss Molly, I ain’t as old as I look, and I got a fort o’ my own beyant the Green River.  This year, what I’ll take in for my cargo, what I’ll make cash money fer work fer the immygrints, I’ll salt down anyways ten thousand; next year maybe twicet that, or even more.  I sartainly will do a good trade with them Mormons.”

“I suppose,” said the girl, patient with what she knew was alcoholic garrulity.