Madre d'Oro. The Mother-of-Gold. Cliffs of it, thick, streaked like bacon, the lean for the gold, the fat for the quartz. Blast into it, and who knows what you'll find?"
"Is this hall you got?" asked Lefty, his eyes shining in the light of the dip stuck into the miner's candlestick at the head of the bunk like a wild animal's in the dark. His voice was hoarse, his fists were closely gripped.
"'Bout half of what I got out of the lode. Rest's bin stolen. I was lucky to git that much, with th' arrers an' bullets thicker'n bees when a b'ar robs the bee-tree. Dave got a big chunk. So did Lem."
The three listeners looked at each other furtively. This talk of a great wall of quartz, blazing with strings and patches of gold, reaching way up into the blackness; of arrows and bullets, sounded like delirium. Surely the old man's mind was failing. Healy tapped on the back of Lyman's hand.
"Three of you, were they?" he asked. "Where are Dave and Lem?"
"I figger th' 'Paches got 'em long ago," said the prospector. "Dave went down first to try and relocate an' he never came back. Then Lem tried his luck an' he never showed. They was two men with Dave, an' Lem took in five or six. Thet was afore they caught Geronimo. The bucks got all of 'em, I reckon. Whisky, Stone, an' give me the Bible."
Stone passed the whisky to Healy, who held it to Lyman's purpling lips, and Stone got the old volume from the bag. At Lyman's direction he opened it in the middle, so that there was an open space be-
