With bowed head and unsteady steps the man left the cabin and disappeared.
Little Abe had remained speechless and frightened in a corner. Now he picked up his fiddle, and suddenly from it came a weird melody. It was a crazy tune, filled with wild fancies and ghostly phantoms.
“He is playing the music of that deranged soul,” murmured Frank.
The sound of the fiddle died in a wail, and the boy sat shivering and silent in the corner.
“This is a little too much of a ghostly thing!” exclaimed Merry as he arose and shook himself. “Let’s talk of something else, Hodge. To-morrow we start for the Mazatzals, and I have everything ready. If we can locate that mine, one-half of it is yours.”
He took from his pocket a leather case and removed from it a torn and soiled map, which he spread on the table. Together he and Bart examined the map once more, as they had done many times before.
“There,” said Frank, “is Clear Creek, running down into the Rio Verde. Somewhere to the northwest of Hawley Peak, as this fellow indicated here on the map, in the valley shown by this cross, is Benson Clark’s claim.”
“The location is vaguely marked,” said Bart. “We may search for it a year without discovering it.”
“That’s true; but we know approximately somewhere near where it is.”
“Well,” said Hodge, “we will do our best. That’s all any one can do. It is your fortune, Frank, to be lucky; and for that reason we may be successful.”