“But why all the antlers lashed to the trees?” Jack queried after they had established comrade-like relations.
“I have blazed the trail to my cabin with antlers so that he who chances this way with his eyes open can find me.”
Bull Moose Joe was a man who stood six foot in his moccasins, was of medium build and as straight as an Indian. He looked as if he might have stepped out of the great West in the days of the fifties for he wore his hair long, had a mustache and a goatee. As usual with white men up there he must needs have the news from down under, no matter how stale it was, and then, also as usual, the conversation just naturally drifted over to the channel of gold. It was then that Bull Moose Joe gave the boys the greatest jolt they had had in all their varied but brief career in the gold fields.
“I take it you boys are looking for the same thing I came up to look for ten years ago,” he said in an off-hand way.
“Yes, it’s gold we’re after,” replied Jack.
“Gold in moosehide sacks piled up like cordwood!” he added, watching the effect of his words on the boys.
And the effect was truly electrical for their faces became rigid, their eyes glassed over and they felt the very blood in their arteries congeal into water-ice.
“And—and—did you find it?” asked Jack when he had recovered his powers of speech a little.
“Yes, that’s what we want to know,” Bill gurgled as if his gullet was choked up.
Bull Moose Joe pulled a couple of times on his pipe, watched the hot smoke ascend and dissolve away just as had his dreams of gold. He laughed softly. He was in no hurry to answer but to the boys the moments seemed like an age.