“You’re the first one to ask me what I was doing,” he told her. “The rest of them decided I was a detective without asking me, so I let them think what they liked.”
“Ye’re simple!” she scoffed. “If folks knowed ye was a-huntin’ the mine they’d jest laff an’ let ye go it, but seein’ ye a-slidin’ round so quiet an’ not knowin’—wal, ye can’t blame folks for s’picionin’ things. An’ all to once ye might fall into trouble so hard ye’d never git outen it.”
“Maybe you’re right. But aren’t you wrong about the silver? I thought it was gold.”
She swallowed the bait whole.
“Nah! Silver, I tell ye. I’d oughter know—I lived into this place all my life, an’ I hearn the story many’s the time.
“Ol’ Ninety-Nine—everybody’s forgot what his real name was, ’twas so long ago—he worked the mine all by hisself an’ wouldn’t let nobody else know wher’ ’twas. Bimeby he turned up missin’, an’ he never come back. But a long time afterward one o’ the Injuns round here come to ’Lias Fox an’ ast him to help him onto somethin’ he couldn’t do alone. ’Lias he was pretty old, but he was strong an’ willin’, an’ him an’ this Injun went up into the woods down yender, toward the ledges. An’ when they got up into the rawcks the Injun blindfolded him ’fore he’d go any fu’ther ’long.”
She paused suddenly and again looked up and down the road.
“An’ then he took ’Lias a-stubblin’ round into them rawcks,” she resumed, “an’ pretty quick ’Lias lost track o’ wher’ he was. But bimeby the Injun took the hankercher offen his eyes, an’ he was a-standin’ beside a big flat rawck like a trap-door, with another rawck a-stickin’ up beside of it like a marker. Then the Injun got a good stout pry, an’ they got one end under the flat rawck an’ bore down, an’ the two of ’em hefted up that rawck an’ wedged it. An’ under it was a hole with some rawck steps a-runnin’ down an’ into the ledge.
“The Injun he went down into the hole, but he made ’Lias stay out an’ see the pry didn’t slip. Pretty quick he come up an’ tied ’Lias’s eyes ag’in, an’ ’Lias had to let him ’cause he was old an’ the Injun looked pretty bad. Then the Injun walked him out a ways an’ left him an’ went back, an’ ’Lias hearn the rawck go bang down wher’ ’twas before, an’ then the Injun come back, an’ they went ’long out, with the Injun ahead.
“’Lias, he got so curious he nigh busted, an’ he slipped the cloth up an’ peeked. An’ the Injun was a-carryin’ two big heavy bars o’ silver. ’Lias, he knowed then he’d been to Ninety-Nine’s Mine. But he didn’t dast say nawthin’, an’ he pulled down the hankercher an’ never let on. Bimeby the Injun stopped an’ took off the cloth, an’ they was out o’ the rawcks an’ the Injun didn’t have no silver—he’d laid it down somewheres. He told ’Lias to go home an’ keep his mouth shet, an’ he’d come back sometime an’ show ’Lias somethin’ that’d make him rich. An’ then he went back into the rawcks an’ ’Lias went home.