CHAPTER XV

HUGH LEARNS OLD GRIMES IS STILL DEAD Fortune picks her favourites strangely. While the McClintocks were away at the war Robert Dodson, incompetent and worthless, developed from a pauper to a millionaire. His was one of the sudden shifts of luck to which Virginia City was becoming used. Most men in the camp had a trunkful of mining stock picked up here and there, a lot of it feet in wildcat concerns hawked about in exchange for meal tickets, boots, shirts, liquor, and other supplies. This was scattered so promiscuou…