years. But, even before Christmas, the lack of fresh vegetables
caused scurvy to break out, and disappointed adventurer after
disappointed adventurer took to his bunk in abject surrender to
this culminating misfortune. Not so Tarwater. Even before the
first symptoms appeared on him, he was putting into practice his
one prescription, namely, exercise. From the junk of the old
trading post he resurrected a number of rusty traps, and from one
of the steamboat captains he borrowed a rifle.

Thus equipped, he ceased from wood-chopping, and began to make more
than a mere living. Nor was he downhearted when the scurvy broke
out on his own body. Ever he ran his trap-lines and sang his
ancient chant. Nor could the pessimist shake his surety of the
three hundred thousand of Alaskan gold he as going to shake out of
the moss-roots.

"But this ain't gold-country," they told him.

"Gold is where you find it, son, as I should know who was mining
before you was born, 'way back in Forty-Nine," was his reply.
"What was Bonanza Creek but a moose-pasture? No miner'd look at
it; yet they washed five-hundred-dollar pans and took out fifty
million dollars. Eldorado was just as bad. For all you know,
right under this here cabin, or right over the next hill, is
millions just waiting for a lucky one like me to come and shake it
out."

At the end of January came his disaster. Some powerful animal that
he decided was a bob-cat, managing to get caught in one of his
smaller traps, dragged it away. A heavy snow-fall put a stop