Meanwhile the guide had come back to where the little party began to make preparations for the night, the packs having been taken from the backs of Mike and Molly, and everybody finding something to do in the bustle.
"Get anything?" asked Thad, as Toby Smathers came up, a grin decorating his sunburnt but honest face.
"Oh! it was the kunnel, all right," replied the guide. "I knows the mark o' his hoof among a thousand. An' he's got them two pizen sharks along o' him, Waffles and Dickey Bird. They been kicked out of nigh every camp in the silver region, but they just about suit the ijee of the kunnel, when he wants any dirty work done."
"And that's what you call finding the long lost silver mine, do you?" asked the scoutmaster, smiling.
"Well, accordin' to the ijee of most decent miners, that same Rawson had the first claim on that ere mine; and any feller that rediscovers it ought to turn a third of the proceeds over to the fambly of the man as got thar first. But you don't ketch Kunnel Kracker doin' any such foolish business as that. He'd gobble the whole business, and snap his finger at the widow and orphans. But they's one thing I don't just exactly understand about the marks hereabouts. Seems to be a boy along with the gang. Now, whatever could such an old seasoned prospector and miner as Kracker want with a half grown boy up in this part of the country, when he's huntin' for a mine that seems to have dropped out of sight, like it fell through to China? That's what gets me."
"Perhaps it might be an Indian boy; we had a glimpse of such a half grown brave skulking along, one day. He seemed to want to count noses in our crowd the worst kind, and we wondered if he meant to steal anything; but after a while he just cut stick and cleared out, looking a lot disappointed over something. Giraffe here tried to get close enough to him to speak, but he was that shy he kept moving off all the time. We thought he might have expected to see somebody he knew among us, a boy perhaps, and when he found that we were a pack of strangers he didn't want anything more to do with us."
"This wa'n't any red-skinned boy, but a white," Toby declared, positively. "An Injun would a toed-in, and wore moccasins; but he had on shoes, and turned his toes out, all right, civilized way. But then, just as you say, p'raps it don't matter a row of beans to us who he was. We may run acrost 'em sooner or later; and again mebbe we won't."
When the two tents were in position it began to look "jolly much like a camp," as Step Hen declared.
The mules were allowed to graze on the little tufts of grass that grew in spots around, where there was enough earth to allow of such a thing. Close by was an occasional stunted tree, from which the boys easily secured all the firewood that was apt to be needed.
And how genial that blaze did look in the coming night, as it shone upon the tents, the smiling faces of the scouts, and the general surroundings, so wild and lonely.