He asked for "a job," but even before Mr. Willett had made up his mind to hire him, he set to work to give an exhibition of his skill; and the result was so entirely satisfactory that he was retained on his own terms.
But it is much easier to explain the presence of these people than it is to account for the strange home in which they lived.
Learned men claim that long before the coming of the white men to this continent, long, indeed, before the coming of the Indians, that there was a strange race of people in that Western land, whom, for the want of a better name, they call "The Cave Dwellers."
But no matter how formed, or by whom they were first inhabited, these caves—they are quite common in that land—made ready and comfortable homes for the mining adventurers.
Those occupied by Mr. Willett and his associates, consisted of a series of eight apartments, all opening on the plateau and all connected by passage ways that must have been the work of human hands.
The apartments were circular in shape, and the largest, which was used as a kitchen and general store room, was about twenty feet in diameter and ten feet in height.
As before stated there was an ample spring of delicious cool water in this apartment, and the original hewers of the caves, no doubt, selected the place on this account.
After a hearty supper, Mr. Willett and Hank Tims lit their pipes and sat before the fire, for though the days are warm in this land the nights are unusually cool.
Drift wood, picked up from the crevices of the rocks in which it had been lodged by floods caused by the melting of snow in the mountains, constituted the fuel of the camp, and the great pile near the fire showed that it was to be had in abundance.
All had been working hard that day, so after a desultory talk about the great success that was meeting their search for gold, they lay down on their blanket cots in the other apartments and went to sleep—that is, all but Sam and his father.