Where Your Treasure Is: Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver

SPEAKING of money--and it’s a mighty popular topic--the investment of the first twenty-five cents I ever earned, all at a crack, ought to have directed my feet, my thoughts, and...

I met her on Purgatory Hill one day--and never did that name seem to apply so well! I had been out on my uncle’s business, and among other plunder in the beach-wagon were two sh...

Then I stood up in the tavern foreroom and cursed family and foes and town with such lurid invective--my vocabulary and force being so far beyond the ordinary capabilities of yo...

“You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like you, right in the middle of that dicker-t...

I lived on chestnuts because I found men selling them on the street. I drank water from horse-fountains. After I walked all day and most of the night, and napped for a while, st...

I had on brogan shoes which I had fresh-tallowed for the day. My stockings were home-knit and bulged out in folds over the tops of my shoes. But I was not so keenly self-conscio...

“I don’t say you do--but a lot of trouble has sometimes been made in partnerships by women. So that’s why I have flipped the buried card at the start-off. Now tune up and let it...

“Sure, she must have asked, for I wouldn’t go to blart-ing that around, making the rest of us out as pirates, unless she had pinned me down. I reckon she did just that! Pinned m...

“We’ll see what can be done,” I assured her. “This syndicate--this combination--a very large concern,” I floundered on, trying to think up some sort of a plausible lie to accoun...

I borrowed some blank paper and went up to my room and figured for many hours, stopping only to eat a good dinner--a boiled dinner in Vose’s best style. My plate was piled high...

NEXT morning Dodovah Vose drove me to the railroad station at the Lower Comers. He looked at the trip as a sort of a triumphal parade, and said so to me.

Oh, the tone in which he said that! Questions were crowding in my throat, but I did not dare to pry into troubles as deep as Judge Kingsley’s most certainly were. But I had to h...

“And yet, the fraud did not seem to be barefaced while they were at work on me,” lamented the old gentleman. “One of them, the one who came to town first, was the son of one of...

But my feelings got away from me when he began to protest and argue and ask questions about why and where and when. The balky old mule! And I was giving him my soul and service...

“So much the better. Lawyers ought to keep their brains cool. Seeing that you’ve got the brains and propose to keep ’em cool, I’ve got to keep up my nerve--and so I’ll take a dr...

The judge was all of a tremble while we stood there at the edge of the shadow and watched the room and the drinkers. At last, with a flourish of his hand, Pratt gave orders to t...

With footsteps muffled by the mud of Royal City, moving unseen in the night, I was truly a generous cuss. I located nothing for myself. I took the “Imperial Emporium” for Pratt,...

I also learned that many miners and prospectors from the Buffalo Hump region were mudbound, on their annual spree, in Breed--the nearest town where they could find all the rum a...

“I’m going to shoot you now and here in your tracks, where every one can look on,” I told him in a whisper--and I kept smiling. “Don’t you dare to pull a gun. I’ve got you cover...

I went to the bank in his company, for he seemed to be bothered with the notion that those five-hundred-dollar bills needed me as introducer and sponsor. Then he hotfooted out,...

Dragg came first--carrying out the suggestion of his name by pulling at Mr. Pratt with all his strength, and Dawlin pushed behind. They halted often and one of their stops was j...

Uncle Deck fairly bored the judge with his gaze when the old man walked to the platform and I was as intent with my scrutiny, for I was wondering how Kingsley would get through...

I don’t know just what he might have done to me if he had been sober--but he wasn’t sober. I was, and my line of work had made me lithe and quick. I snapped my man before he had...

“Father’s girl sees more clearly every day that he needs a guardian,” she said, with a rather hard laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Keedy, but I do not need your invitation to stay.”

“You nev--You don’t--You ain’t ever--” Ike took another drag at the gingerbread, and swallowed hard. “Why, the Snohomish Glutton is known--the Snohomish Glutton, he has eat at o...

I had good eyes and I spotted the objects right off. There were three curved ribs of a ship outlined against the white of the breaking rollers beyond. The telescope gave the vie...

When I reached bottom under the lighter they lowered an old mushroom anchor to me. I unhooked it, and started to roll it along the “windrows” of sand toward the wreck. It took e...

“That ain’t any of your business!” declared Ike, with heat. “We have begun to get up that gold. We’ll get all of it. It’s there, just as I said it was. I want ten per cent, of a...

My equipment had been almost ready when Keedy arrived, but now another consideration held me back. I did not propose to let the other crowd in on my methods if I could help it....

Down and down--five feet more, so I reckoned. Then my heart gave a jump. My feet had touched something. It was smooth and hard and flat, and spread under me horizontally. But I...

The girl and I were in the lee of the deck-house, to get out of the trades, and we did not see the boat when it came off Keedy’s schooner. Had I seen it coming, Keedy would neve...

“I say fight back! It may be their money--somebody’s money--but what good did it do them or anybody else until you came here with your strength and your courage and your brains...

“Gentlemen,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for Marcena Keedy’s tongue you would have shown a better side to us when you arrived here.” Nobody seemed ready to say anything for a mom...

“Don’t you worry one mite about my knob,” I shouted, cracking my scarred knuckles against it--and the pain in the knuckles made me all the uglier. “I’m not going to be nursed an...