William Wallace Cook

“ The sample was of white quartz, the size of a man’s fist, all fuzzy with yellow wires. Virgin metal, forced through the rock crevices in spirals, overlaid the basic stone as with golden filigree-work. Such ore was not known in the Tres Alamos district, nor could veteran prospectors remember that any had been found within a hundred miles. From whence, then, had Jim brought this? The camp dreamed golden dreams, and the crippled outcast of the hills was transformed into an object of universal solicitude.
Patterson wove an ingenious theory about the skull and the leather pouch. ”

“ The strain of alien blood that had led him to hunger for a master among men had made him equally an outcast among his kind and among those whose favor he courted. Although he fought nobly, yet he would have been overborne and rent in pieces had not Patterson, Blake, and Reynolds charged to his rescue. The pack fled helter-skelter in every direction, Jim seizing his opportunity and disappearing as completely as the rest. ”

“ Jim, discovered though he was, felt that here was an invitation to fetch and carry which was evidence of an amicable change in the sentiment of the camp. He released the woodchuck, caught up the infernal machine, and laid it tenderly at Patterson’s door.
What might have happened is problematical. What really did happen left on the watchers a vivid impression of the celerity with which a man can move when his house is menaced. Patterson got to the door with a bucket of water just in time to drench the bomb—and the astounded Jim. ”