"Yes, that was his name," answered the other, who had gone over and shaken hands with the guide, with Giraffe, and finally with Allan, in each instance giving a convulsive squeeze to their hands in a way that told more eloquently than words could have ever done what intense gratitude filled his boyish heart.
"The original discoverer of the wonderful silver mine that has never been located since that time, so long ago?" Thad went on.
"Then you do know about that?" Aleck remarked, quickly; "I was wondering, seeing that you must be strangers around these regions, whether you had heard."
"Our guide, Tony Smathers here, told us; he used to know your father; and he said there was a family located somewhere down in Utah," the scoutmaster continued.
"My mother, and three small sisters; the youngest was a baby when he died," Aleck went on to say, as though he realized that explanations from him must now be in order, since these boys had done so much for him; and besides, even though they were next door to strangers to him, some sort of free masonry within seemed to tell Aleck that they were going to prove the best friends he had ever known.
"Do you feel able to walk with us down into the valley to our camp?" Thad asked.
"I should say I did, and be only too glad into the bargain!" exclaimed the other, his voice filled with delight. "And while we're going I want to tell you just how it came that I was on that horrible little shelf of rock, placed there by Colonel Kracker, who said I would never leave it alive unless I gave up to him the secret of my father's hidden silver mine. And he promised to come up there above me every day, to ask me if I was ready to throw up the sponge. But I'd have died there before I played the coward, and told him what he wanted; for how could I ever look my mother and sisters in the face again, if I saved my useless life by selling out their mine to that cruel and hateful man?"