"Sure! just so sure that I ain't quitting this rock until I've gone over it with a tooth-comb and found where this guy lifted it off," announced Manton with stolid decision as one after the other he seized upon the dirty lumps his foot had dislodged, and hastily cleansing them, set them not unlike a little heap of grime-encrusted potatoes.
Half an hour later the two men relinquished their labors, having brought to light possibly some twenty pounds weight, mostly in pieces no larger than a walnut, though a few odd bits were larger than the original discovery. As was to be expected, all had lain as in a nest.
"Reckon that's all the guy was toting—likely in some sort of a sack which rotted when he cashed in," said Manton, straightening up.
"Queer, though, that a guy should go packing that weight when he took sick—must have been a stroke or something sudden," said Haynes thoughtfully.
"Well, we needn't worry—he just cashed in, that's all—but it's a stroke of luck for us, nothing less than two-thousand bucks lying here," replied Manton, callously eyeing the pile with supreme appreciation.
"Two thousand! Why, that's the price of a nifty little eraft, said Haynes sharply.
"Sure! and if it was twenty thousand I wouldn't kick—I got it in my head that this is only the tail-end of a big cache somewhere on this rock," growled Manton irritably.
"Maybe," replied Haynes without enthusiasm, his mind harking back again to the enigma of the unknown. "All the same there's something mighty queer about it—a guy doesn't drop in his tracks like this one without a mighty good reason, I feel it in my bones. There's something which ain't natural missing from this yarn." And despite his partner's impatience at such mere sentiment a silence and depression quite unaccountable came upon Haynes.
It may have been that an aura of bygone happenings still lingered around the spot and by some queer psychological kink found in him a medium keyed to its translation into tangible expression of the volcanic emotions that had filled to overflowing the last tense moments of the mysteriously stricken man—for who shall limit the unplumbed depths, of human consciousness?
However, whatever the origin of this depression there was born in him a great unwillingness to prosecute the exploration farther, yet having, no good reason to oppose: the advance he silently and gloomily followed his partner toward the glare of the open and mechanically imitated his example of snapping a twig every noiw and again to blaze a sure return to their lucky discovery, which for lack of a container they temporarily abandoned; later the bread bag from the camp would serve well for the noble burden.
Shortly they stood on the nude, swelling breast of the hill, here almost devoid of soil where naught but patches of coarse, brittle herbage found sustenance. The wall of jungle they had pierced appeared by contrast forbidding and impenetrable.
They stood for a moment gazing across the open to where the fleckless blue sky seemed almost to lie on the edge of the slope.
"That guy must have cut across this way from the beach beyond. Ambergrease ain't never found except on the beach or floating," said the practical Manton.
"Queer though—there ain't a thing to hurt a canary here. Yet toting a pack he drops like a stone," brooded Haynes persistently.
"Well, we got no need to worry about it—he's dead meat, we ain't—
