of the Goblet, stood at last in the ooze and sand of the bottom. And when, after a few moments of groping elbow deep in the muck about his boots, he lifted his head and stood upright, it appeared to the men lining the rim above him that the bronze cheeks of Big Bill Steele had gone suddenly pale.
Five years ago, fishing above the Goblet, he had found in a shallow pool from which the summer stream was subsiding a small nugget of almost pure gold. It was worn very smooth, indicating countless years of water action. This had been one day, and the next, searching high and low for a vein, he had discovered the Cache. Then he had gone to Mexico. During the passing of the five years his theory had formed. And that theory had been merely that Thunder River, beating at its banks in its age-long fury, had torn out other bits of gold, had dragged them in its triumphant miserliness down into its breast, had hidden them and borne them … Where? Always had the vision of the Goblet risen to answer him; everything that the river found it carried downstream. Leaves and sticks it would whip out again, hurling them over the rim. If its raging spring torrents clutched at gold, nugget or fine particles, it would carry none of it beyond the Goblet, which thus was destined to become the hiding place of the wealth of Thunder River. There it would be safe through the centuries, from the day when these old mountains were young until the day when Bill Steele came.
And he had come, he had guessed the secret which Thunder River had hidden under its volleying roar, he
