had laid off his coat, and now the baggy, bilious trousers hung
precariously from his angular shoulders by suspenders of alarming
frailty. His legs were lost in gum boots, also loose and
cavernous, and his entire costume looked relaxed and flapping, so
that he gave the impression of being able to shake himself out of
his raiment, and to rise like a burlesque Aphrodite. His face was
overgrown with a grizzled tangle that looked as though it had been
trimmed with button-hole scissors, while above the brush heap
grandly soared a shiny, dome-like head.

"Has he always been bald?"

"Naw! He ain't bald at all. He shaves his nob. In the early days
he wore a long flowin' mane which was inhabited by crickets, tree-
toads, and such fauna. It got to be a hobby with him finally, so
that he growed superstitious about goin' uncurried, and would back
into a corner with both guns drawed if a barber came near him. But
once Hank--that's his real name--undertook to fry some slapjacks,
and in givin' the skillet a heave, the dough lit among his forest
primeval, jest back of his ears, soft side down. Hank polluted the
gulch with langwidge which no man had ought to keep in himself
without it was fumigated. Disreppitableness oozed out through him
like sweat through an ice-pitcher, an' since then he's been known
as Slapjack Simms, an' has kept his head shingled smooth as a gun
bar'l. He's a good miner, though; ain't none better--an' square as
a die."

Sluicing had begun on the Midas. Long sinuous lengths of canvas
hose wound down the creek bottom from the dam, like gigantic
serpents, while the roll of gravel through the flumes mingled