before it levelled down to cake and crack under the sun, ready for its next victim.
•••••••
The only sounds in the amphitheatre at the head-waters of Tonto Creek, some three months later, were the whirring of cicadas, the munch-crunch of a contented burro, and the tap-tap of a prospector's sledge. Up on the mesa the Treasure Butte was yielding up its gold by the most modern methods, the romance of the mine almost ancient history, except to its fortunate owners, of whom, strange to say, the prospector in the cañon was one.
He worked on a jumble of rock formation that filled the gap of the gorge of the placer-creek, now a side-issue of the Mogollon Mining Company. As he pecked away with the perseverance of a woodpecker on insect-infected bark, he hummed and sometimes he talked to himself, as Desert Rats will do, whether they are millionaires in their old age or not.
"This is the most likely place in Arizony to find 'em," he said. "A bunch of mussed-up rock like this. Reglar junk-shop o' mineral. Them's garnets and all this is crystalline schist. A little shot"
He set his stick of dynamite into the socket he had prepared for it. As in the days of his youth, he crimped the cap with his teeth and attached the fuse. Then he walked away after lighting it and watched it sputter, remembering the way the fuses had sputtered in the darkness of the great cavern that now was
