Dead Man's Gold/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
the dry placer
THE long days passed with Stone restless as a haltered stallion in the spring and Larkin in much the same condition. Harvey was more stolid. Their camping-place down by the stream was pleasant and Harvey took charge of it. Larkin and Stone tried to eke out the time with fishing, with walks into the town twice a day to ask for the mail that would bring Stone's remittance, to locate a couple of burros, or to chat with the telegrapher and the store-keeper.
Curiously, both Larkin and Stone bothered a good deal about the same thing, the nursing of Healy by Peggy Furniss. It did not occur to either of them that there were plenty of professional nurses at the sanitarium and that the doctor would not be likely to delegate the girl to duties that were any but the most perfunctory. It did not occur to them that the girl might have made her statement in a teasing spirit to offset Larkin's remark about "angels." Larkin, to Stone's secret amusement, though he was really sympathetic, was openly jealous of Healy and fearful that the girl might fall for the gambler's fascinations. Stone felt no fears as to Peggy Furniss not being able to take care of herself nor as to her general good judgment where men were concerned, but he was apprehensive lest she and Healy might get to discussing Lola and disclose the latter's secret. There was nothing to be ashamed of in the matter but it was Lola's secret until she told it, if she ever cared to. She was not the kind, Stone thought, to cause Peggy chagrin from having accepted money obtained under such conditions. There seemed nothing to be done in the matter, however, and the chances of revelation were fairly remote but it added to the irritation of suspense. Meantime, they saw nothing of Peggy Furniss.
On the tenth day, Stone's money arrived and they plunged into buying. They got two burros and their pack-saddles for fifty dollars and the rest went for a list of provisions, tools, and explosives. Stone and Larkin each made special purchases. Stone's consisted of two hundred and fifty feet of light but strong rope, two electric torches with extra batteries, and Larkin's of a compass. Harvey produced his own compass, that he had carried for years, but Larkin scoffed at it.
"You've bin carrying it round in your pocket wiv bits of hiron and steel and metal scrap," he said. "Put it on the counter, side of this one. Wot did I tell yer? Five points orf. Five points 'ud myke a sight of difference. I might not be able to locate the bloomin' placer hafter hall and then I'd git 'ell."
"Lyman gave you your bearings, I suppose?" said Stone.
"Yep"
"Then Lyman's own compass would be as liable to variation as Harvey's and from the same causes," said Stone.
Larkin's face fell. "I never thought of that," he confessed.
"I don't imagine it will make much difference," said Stone. "There won't be many creek-beds, dry or wet, within a variation of a few degrees. We can test till we get the gold, if there should be more than one."
"There's honly one w'ot's got gold in it, haccordin' to Lyman," said Larkin. "Funny 'ow many things 'as gone wrong habout this trip. 'Bout time it started to go right for a change. Let's telephone up and see 'ow 'Ealy is gettin' halong."
They got Doctor Seward on the wire and he promised them that Healy would be fit to leave after two days more. The wound was healing nicely but he would have to be careful of his arm and carry it in a sling.
They were up and on the road to the sanitarium before dawn on the third morning, the burros packed, the little caravan swinging along at a lively clip up tumbling Clear Creek, hurrying down to join the Verde. They had told Healy to be ready for them and they found him waiting, looking fit and professing eagerness. They did not see the girl until Stone went up to the main building to pay his respects to the doctor. After a little hesitation Larkin followed him.
Doctor Seward absolutely refused to take any payment for Healy.
"If you chaps strike a fortune," he said, smilingly, "I'll let you endow a bed."
"Wot's that mean?" asked Larkin. The doctor explained.
"We'll hendow a bloomin' 'orsepittle if we strike w'ot we're hafter," Larkin said. Then came the anticipated question.
"Which way are you boys going?" asked the doctor, without showing any particular curiosity. "You read, perhaps, where some prospectors were wiped out by the Apaches down Stone Men Cañon? About the time you got into trouble yourselves. They claim there's no gold there, anyway."
Stone looked at him closely but the doctor showed no signs of hidden meaning or undue desire to meddle in their affairs.
"Read about it in the Phoenix papers," Stone said. "But we're working north up toward the Little Colorado."
"I've heard there's gold that way," answered the doctor and dismissed the matter as he shook hands with them and wished them good luck. As they left his office they almost ran into Peggy Furniss. Larkin's face grew red and he embarrassed. He took her outstretched hand as if she had suddenly put a damp and dead fish into his palm instead of her own magnetic fingers.
"I want to wish you all kinds of good luck," she said. "I haven't heard from Mary, Mr. Stone, but letters are so long in coming when she's on 'loke.' I hope we'll see you both again. I suppose I shall be in Hollywood when you get back. But, wherever I am, Mary will be. Mail to the SunKraft will always reach us," she added, with a side-glance at Larkin.
"I hope Healy was grateful for your care," said Stone.
"He didn't get very much of it," she said, frankly. "To tell you the truth, I don't think much of your friend Mr. Healy. He may be all right as a man's man, but I don't just fancy him." Larkin's face shone like that of the moon suddenly released from a cloud. "So I didn't see very much of him," she concluded. "I like sugar in my coffee but when it's over-sweet it makes me sick."
"There's Harvey looking for me," lied Stone in Larkin's cause, as they came out on the vine-covered veranda. "No hurry. Lefty, I'll give you a whistle. Good-bye, Miss Furniss. I hope we do see you again."
"I'll hand that on to Mary," she said. And as Stone went down to where Harvey was talking with Healy and adjusting the latter's personal baggage on one of the patient burros he heard the girl ask Larkin why he was called "Lefty."
"Becos I'm sort of hequally 'andy wiv heither 'and," Lefty answered.
"What the devil is keeping Larkin?" Healy demanded, presently. "Why don't we get started?"
"Going to make most of the mesa trip by night this time," said Stone. "We don't have to bother about our strength giving out for lack of food this trip. No sense in starting too soon. Larkin 'll come when I let him know we're ready."
"Sticking round that fool girl who thinks she's a movie actress, I suppose," said Healy. "She's a"
"A very good friend of mine and all of us," said Stone. "If it wasn't for her, Healy, the coyotes would be cracking your bones long ago, after the buzzards had got through with them." It seemed very evident to him that Healy had attempted certain convalescent blandishments that had been nipped in the bud by the girl. He rather wondered at it, though he was well satisfied with the way things had turned out. Peggy Furniss was not, Stone fancied, the type to attract Healy. The gambler would be apt to prefer a fuller-blown, bolder type or else the opposite extreme, the clinging vine of innocence. Healy's taste would run toward the exploitation of the one or the despoiling of the other and Peggy Furniss was neither. Pretty enough, prettier than when they had first seen her, for the past ten days of returned health had exiled all hollows and been gracious to all curves; she was far from being a fool.
There was a spring beneath some trees not far from the sanitarium and they rested there until sundown, sleeping through the afternoon. Between eight that night and five the next morning they achieved twenty miles in the cool of the night, marching under the stars and a nearly full moon that rose late in the afternoon and was still plain, but wan, in the west when they made a dry camp for breakfast.
Twilight came before they reached the head of Stone Men Cañon and they lost no time descending to its ravaged floor. They did not stay to look for the petrified bodies in the pool. They were too busy finding practical trail for the nimble-footed burros. Healy, too, had to be aided, to avoid using his arm, which he carried in a sling. But they got down before it was dark, passing the cave with its fresh scar on the blackened limestone where the ledge had fallen, over the barrier of rock and mud and broken trees where the gorge debouched into the main cañon, and then upstream for half a mile above the place of tragedy.
Whatever investigation had been carried on by the Government authorities was long since over. The only traces left were those of the earth itself and the trees. Huge burrows of dirt doubtless covered most of the dead. But in the last of the afterglow, with the purple shadows piling up, the place had a gloomy look and an eerie atmosphere and they were glad to get above it and around a bend of the creek that hid the spot.
"W'ot's the matter wiv pushin' on ter-night?" asked Larkin as they ate their supper beside the fire. "Moon's bright henough. Carn't be far to the headwaters."
Stone looked at the rest.
"How about the burros?" he asked.
"Mile or so more won't hurt 'em," said Harvey. All four of them were caught in the fever of hope and anticipation. At last they were on the very threshold of fortune.
"I'm in favour of going on," said Healy, "though I don't know if we can do much after we get there, until daylight. I've got to find a certain rock, you see, and it may not be easy because, from what Lyman told me, the head of the cañon is nothing but a medley of rocks and boulders."
"A rock!" Larkin was hugging his knees and nodding across the fire at Healy. "That's it. Show me the rock and I'll show you somefing. Let's get there so's we can start first thing hin the morning."
"The ayes have it," said Stone.
It was about two miles to where the headwaters of Tonto Fork rose out of swampy ground at the base of the cliffs that ended the cañon. The place was an amphitheatre of rocky walls broken here and there with gaps down which in the rain rushed the storm waters from the mesa. These were beds of ancient streams and one of them was the dry creek of the placer mine. There were some half dozen of these coming in from north and south to join Tonto Fork. Trickles of water seeped out of moss and rank grasses to form, almost in the centre of the amphitheatre, a pool from which the creek emerged as a distinct waterway. And everywhere, out of the bog, out of the sand, were masses of rock in weird confusion, high-lighted by the moon, sending out dark, confusing shadows from the same source. Some seemed the last deposits of the melting glacier that had crumbled ages ago, some appeared deeper-rooted, while others were apparently balanced upon nubbins of hard stone at their base, not unlike enormous pegtops.
The lathe of the weather, the rush of water and of sand-charged winds, had worn away their softer parts and left them in suggestive shapes. There were sphinxes, crouching or on tall pedestals, mammoth oysters set on edge, enormous mushrooms, antediluvian monsters standing here and there as if turned to stone like the unfortunates in the blue pool; heraldic monuments of a bygone age, mutilated by storm and time. Of red and white sand and limestone, they gave a first swift impression to Stone of being the pieces of a giants' chessboard, left at haphazard after an undecided game.
They lit a fire beside the pool and tethered the burros which munched away contentedly at the grass. All four lit their pipes and Harvey made a pot of coffee that they sipped out of tin cups. Sleep did not come readily. They were too eager for the morning. It was easy to see that Healy might have hard work finding any especial rock among all these shadowed shapes and stone nightmares but it was also hard work to sit quietly. So Ali Baba might have felt, arrived at the robbers' cave, thought Stone, suddenly realizing he had forgotten the magic word.
"Wot kind of a rock was it?" asked Larkin. "If we hall 'unted for it, mebbe we could find it."
But Healy was stubborn.
"Couldn't be done. No use tiring ourselves out."
"Ho! Very well, then, I won't tell you my hend of it. To 'ell wiv your rock!" But Larkin did not sulk long. He was bubbling over with the thought of imminent riches and he could not long keep silent.
"Me, I'm goin' to buy me a steam yot," he said, "Sail round the bloomin' world in it. I'll pick hout the plyces I like best and build a 'ouse in hevery one of 'em hin the style of the country."
"Leaving a wife or so in every one of them?" sneered Healy.
"No, you mucker," said Larkin, cheerfully. "I leave that sort of thing for you."
"Got your eye on some special one?" persisted Healy. But Larkin was not to be drawn. He was too happy in his dreams.
"I knew a guy once 'oo said money was a burden," he went on. "Watch me. Honly I hain't hever goin' broke: I've 'ad hall of that I'm needin' for one lifetime. Hafter a w'ile I suppose I'll settle down. Hafter I've seen the world a bit. I'll land final in the hold country, buy me hup some hold mansion with lots of trees habout it and big lawns for the kids to pl'y hon."
"Whose kids?" asked Healy.
"Not yours," retorted Larkin. "And it's none of your bloody bizness, 'Ealy. I suppose you'll start a Monte Carlo. It's 'ard to quit the sucker gyme, they tell me," he ended.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Healy, angrily. "I've stood about all I'm going to from you, you guttersnipe!"
"Then sit down to it, hold top. And there's worse places to be born in than a gutter, 'Ealy. Pleasant dreams. I b'lieve I can sleep, after hall."
He proved his assertion inside of ten minutes by snoring lustily. Harvey turned in imperturbably. If it had been diamonds instead of gold, thought Stone, whimsically, the prospector would not have taken the prospect of wealth so easily. It did not mean so much to him as the rest. As he had said, he was wedded to the desert, he had lost his appetites. One little diamond would have given him the prime satisfaction of his life, to refute those who had laughed at him.
Drowsily Stone revolved a scheme for salting some lonely place with diamonds in the rough and then subtly guiding Harvey in the right direction. He could do things like that now, for surely Lyman would be vindicated to-morrow. And there was Lola!
Healy had caterpillared himself in his blanket; the burros were browsing on the scanty herbage. The heavy breathing of the others helped Stone to his own sleep. The voice of Larkin woke him, talking in his sleep.
"A wall hof solid gold, Peggy, wiv di'monds in it! The biggest for you, and the pick of the gold for hour wedding ring. Glitterin'—glitterin' like the Milky Wy!"
The voice droned off and Stone lay awake, looking straight up at the filmy web of starlight that had furnished Lyman's metaphor. He heard a light footstep in the sand, felt the vibration rather than actually listened to it, and in a second he was wide-awake, sitting up, his automatic in his hand.
"Awake?" asked Healy, standing over him. "I couldn't sleep, either. Thought I heard some coyotes or something prowling round and got up to see. Nothing doing, though.*' He sat down by the fire and rolled a cigarette. How long since Healy had left the fire, Stone wondered. But there was no answer to that problem and soon Healy blanketed himself again. Before Stone got to sleep the sky began to lighten. Harvey stirred and Stone helped him get breakfast.
The fire going and the coffee on, Harvey left Stone to slice the bacon and went to look after the burros. Larkin yawned, sat up and sneezed in the sharp air. Then Healy awoke as Harvey returned.
"Couple of coyotes prowlin' roimd last night," said Harvey. "Jest seen the tracks of the cowardly varmints."
"I heard them last night," said Healy. "Got up and chased them off. Woke Stone up while I was doing it. Let's eat. I want to find that rock. It isn't going to be as easy as I thought. Hurry up with the grub, Harvey."
After a mug of coffee Healy got up, saying he had enough, and wandered off among the multitude of rocks and boulders that speedily hid him from sight. Larkin swallowed what was on his plate and announced his intention of following him.
"'E just 'ates to come through wif 'is hend of it," he said. "If 'e was at the hother hend of this bizness, you and me 'ud never see that wall of quartz an' gold that I was dreaming about hall night. I'm goin' hafter 'im and see just w'ot 'e's hup to." And he followed Healy.
"You see," said Stone to Harvey, "this news was given to us in sections by a man named Lyman who figured one would keep check on the other, and who charged us with seeing that his daughter, from whom he had separated, was found and given a fair half. Healy is to show Larkin the rock and Larkin will show us the placer-bed. That, of course, is one of these dried-up water-courses."
"Lyman?" Harvey was looking at Stone with wide-open eyes. "You mean Wat Lyman, who had two partners, Dave Sims and Lem Burden?"
"He had two partners named Dave and Lem," said Stone. "I don't know their second names. But that's the man. Did you know him?"
"I did nigh on to twenty-five years ago. Dead, is he? He was a tough chap, too. So Lyman's gone across the range? And it's his strike you're after? We all savvied he'd made one, though the three of 'em kep' their mouths shet mighty close about it. Lyman trailed farther west, I heard, but Dave an' Lem stuck around and went out to find the place. They had a bit of a row, so they went separate. And never come back. Desert got 'em, or the 'Paches, more likely."
"I think it's either Dave or Lem, or both, up there in Stone Men Cañon," said Stone.
"By the great Horned Toad, I believe yo're right!" said Harvey slapping his leg. "I never thought of it afore. I 'member lookin' at their specimens. Much like what you had, for placer stuff, but there was quartz, too, onless I'm mistaken. It was fear of the 'Paches kep' 'em off an' hope of the gold thet took 'em to their death like it nigh did us. They was busted most of the time, bein' prospectors. It ain't often the gold-digger gits in on the dividends. Chap named Castro staked 'em."
It was Stone's turn for astonishment.
"The same Castro who's running a gambling and dancing joint at Mexicali?" he asked. "Joe Castro?"
"Shouldn't wonder. This Castro I mean was a young chap then but he was in the same game. A slick one and a crook but smooth enough to get by. So it's Wat Lyman's mine. Well, well."
He fell to musing. Stone did not say anything about the specimens of quartz that the partners of Lyman had exhibited. He, too, was thinking. Castro had grubstaked Dave and Lem to find this mine. And he had, through Healy, attempted to grubstake them in the same endeavour. It was a strange tangle and he groped for the end of the thread. Then Harvey spoke again.
"'Twouldn't take very long to test each of them dry crick-beds," said Harvey, "once you found the rock. Once you knew it was somewhar near the headwaters, for that matter. Yore man wasn't over and above smart in hiding his information, I figger."
"It doesn't seem so," admitted Stone, a little puzzled at the seeming simplicity of the second move. "We'll wait to see what Larkin has to show us. There's a third move and that's mine. It hinges on finding the placer-creek but it has another secret tacked on to it. And a good one."
"I ain't bin figgerin' with a heap of enthusiasm over thet placer of yores," said Harvey. "I ain't strong for dry-placers. If you can git water to 'em, or them to water, it's different, but they's a heap of gold scattered round thet's still lyin' loose for lack of water. Dry-washin' is wasteful and it ain't often the wind is strong enough to winnow the dust. Not but what yore specimens was promisin' enough but if I was you I wouldn't bank extry strong on no dry-placer. No, sirree."
"I'm not," said Stone. "Here comes Larkin."
The Cockney came up to them disconsolate.
"I lost 'im," he said. "Giv' me the slip. Too many rocks to keep 'im in sight. But 'e's gone plumb hover to the south cliffs. That is I trailed 'im's far as the sand showed 'is tracks."
"Going to climb for a better view," suggested Stone. But the minutes passed and Healy did not make his appearance. They discussed a search-party, thinking he might have got lost or hurt in some way, when he reappeared smoking the end of a cigarette which he threw aside as he saw them. His face was flushed and his eyes shining with excitement.
"Found it!" he said. "It was close by all the time, but it kept me guessing to locate it. Come on." He swung on his heels to lead the way. Larkin pulled at Stone's sleeve to hold him back and as Healy and Harvey went out of sight behind a great boulder the Cockney swooped down on the end of the cigarette that Healy had thrown away, picked it up, separated the remaining tobacco from the paper, and spread the result out on the palm of his hand for Stone to inspect.
"Look at this fag," he said, his voice hoarse and whispering. "See that baccy and that paper? Remember, Healy always smokes rice pypers and Bull. So do you. I smoke a pipe and Harvey does w'en 'e don't chew."
"What of it?"
"Wot hof it? This pyper's brown and the baccy's long cut. There hain't hany long-cut baccy in the crowd. Now w'ot do yer myke of it?"
"Healy may have got some different papers and tobacco at the sanitarium, that's all," said Stone. "Very likely, I should think. You're over-suspicious, Larkin. You don't like Healy."
"Yah, I 'ates 'im! Just you wait. Just you"
"They're calling to us," said Stone. "Come on."
They found Healy and Harvey at the foot of a great chunk of red sandstone, roughly oval in its circumference. There was an odd projection like a spout at one end and it was curiously topped with a low pinnacle.
"Teapot Rock!" said Healy, triumphantly. "You two get lost? This is the place, all right. A red rock like a teapot, Lyman told me, with a round white stone at its foot like a great saucer. There it is. No mistaking it. See the spout and the lid? Now, Lefty."
Larkin took out his compass, loosened the set-screw, tapped it, and surveyed the rock.
"So that's it," he said. "Now, then." He spoke the next sentence slowly as if trying to repeat something by rote—exactly as he had got it from the lips of the dying Lyman. "From the top of the rock Healy shows you, west-by-north, eighty degrees west-of-north."
"Sure you've got the figures right?" asked Healy. "Didn't you write them down?"
"Sure I did," grinned Larkin, taking out his knife. "Sure I did. Once hon a bit of pyper, before I come hout to you folks that night. Then I burned up the pyper hafter I put 'em where nobody would be likely to find 'em, case they went snoopin' round me w'ile I was asleep."
He loosened his belt and hitched round his stout khaki breeches, turning down the band and ripping the stitches that attached a square of linen which bore the maker's name and size marks. He tore it loose and exhibited on the back of the linen letters and figures in indelible pencil, turned purple by the sweat of his body but quite legible.
W x N. 80" W OF N.
He put his compass in his pocket and started scrambling up the worn ledges of the rock like a monkey, Stone hard on his heels and Harvey following. Healy, with his wounded arm, stayed on the ground, watching them eagerly. Once on the top, they placed the compass and Harvey set his beside it. Three pairs of eyes followed the trend of the compass points. Then Stone and Harvey straightened up in bitter disappointment. For where they looked for a gap in the wall the cliffs were the most solid, an unbroken escarpment from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet high, taking in a segment that ranged from northwest to southwest, an arc range of easily ninety degrees, a quarter of the entire amphitheatre. Even allowing for differences in compass, for all reasonable variation, there was nothing but blank wall facing them. But Larkin chuckled.
"You didn't hexpect to find hit so heasy as hall that, did yer?" he asked. "'Ealey knows it hain't so simple. Hold Lyman was a fox. Look right where my compass marks the heighty degrees west-of-north. The rock's hall twisted, hain't it? See that yellow dirt that runs all the walls 'cept right there, where it's mixed up with a lot of colours, hall goin' criss-cross? That's the hopening of the placer-creek. But a hearthquake filled it up. Lyman savvied it from the look of the rock. 'Appened way back, 'e said. You'll find your placer on the mesa, back of where hit's filled in."
Harvey nodded comprehension and Stone read the meaning of the jumbled strata that had fallen against each other and wedged in the original mouth of the side ravine. It was a well-guarded secret.
They slid and jumped to the ground and all four of them set off at a run toward the distant cliff. Half-way Harvey stopped and shouted:
"They ain't no sense in goin' over thar," he said. "Thar ain't no way to climb thet cliff. We got to go east or west to the nearest openin' and work back along the mesa to whar the stream didn't run so deep."
They stopped and looked at each other like a lot of foolish schoolboys.
"Of course," said Stone. "Look here, what's the use of fooling with the placer at all? It's hard to work and what's in it is nothing compared with the Madre d'Oro. It's all right as a side-issue. But the quartz is the big thing. The placer is only a pointer. We'll have to test it to make sure, but we might as well take the burros along and go after the big thing."
Harvey looked at him in surprise.
"Thar ain't likely to be no water up thar," he said "I don't rightly git you erbout that Madre d'Oro. That means the Mother Lode. I thought you was after a placer?"
Stone slapped him on the shoulder.
"We're after a chunk of the mother-lode, too, old man," he said. "And you'll be in on it, if it has to be out of my share."
"That'll be hall right," interjected Larkin.
"The water that once ran in that placer-bed came out of a big butte up on the mesa," said Stone. "There are several of them up there but this one was, I fancy, used as a sort of temple-fortress, from what Lyman told me. He rambled a good bit but I've pieced it together. The main thing is that he traced the gold along the dry bed of the creek, getting coarser all the way, till he came to the butte. He and his partners thought they saw traces of masonry walling up a low cave where the water had originally issued. They figured that the gold was once washed out of the butte by the water through this cave. Then the Apaches arrived on the scene and they took shelter on the top of the butte. Later they found a way inside and out again. Never mind that part of the story. But there's water inside the butte, plenty of it, springs and reservoirs. And there's gold. Oodles of it."
"How do you get inside the place?" asked Healy.
"I'll show you that when we get there," said Stone. "But we'll need wood for light. I've got two electric torches but wood will help."
All hands made light work of packing the burros and breaking camp. Healy worked with the rest, handing the lighter articles to Harvey who made up the packs and threw the hitches. The gap to the west seemed the nearest and they hurried up the deep gully to the mesa level and worked north until they judged they were over the opening that had been closed by the upheaval. From the edge they picked out Teapot Rock with its white saucer and checked off the compass direction. There was hardly need for this. Depressions in the ground, the upthrusts of distorted fault-rocks, plainly traced the course of the ancient stream and farther back, where the disturbance had died out, it revealed itself distinctly as a dry creek leading back to a great mound. There were several of these, vast hulks of dark red rock pushing up from the tableland, looking as if they might be the remains of ancient cities crumbled and buried by Time beneath the desert soil. Their beetling walls and flattened tops seemed very much alike, save that one of them held enormous treasure, the path to which was the bed of the perished stream.
Harvey would not immediately test the placer.
"If it's as you was told," he said, "we'll make a better job higher up whar the colours is apt to be coarser. Thar ain't no wind ter speak of, fer drywashin'."
Perforce they curbed their impatience and trailed him until he stopped and took a shovel with a square of canvas from a burro. He carefully selected a spot and took off several shovelfuls before he made closer inspection, sifting some of the stuff through his fingers. His old eyes were alight as he dug his shovel deep and sent the contents high into the air with a twist that shot the lighter particles spraying wide, while the heavier grains pattered down on the canvas. Then all four flopped on their knees about the cloth while Harvey poked at the scattered heap.
"We've hit it," he said.
There was no need of his words. Distinct among the dirt showed grains and pellets of dull yellow, unmistakeable. Gold! Harvey hefted some of them before he passed them to Stone.
"Prime stuff," he said. "And fresh from the quartz. It ain't waterworn. Raw from the matrix. No use wastin' time here if thet's whar it come from." They all looked to where the butte stood up dark against the northern sky, the bulk of its mass chocolate, its western end aflame in the levelling rays of the setting sun. It looked like an ancient fortress. Giant cactus stood sultry all about it.