"Tomorrow?" repeated the Indian, as if considering his other engagements. "Good!" He nodded a smiling assent.
After a month and more of idleness Bud and Amigo performed prodigies of labor in the cut, rolling down boulders, lifting them up on the tram, and clearing away the face of the cliff. Their tram was ramshackle, their track the abandoned rails from older workings, and their tools little more than their hands, but by noon the last broken fragments were heaved aside and the shattered ledge revealed.
A low cry of wonder escaped the Yaqui as he gazed at the rich vein of ore, and as he saw the grim smile on Bud's rugged countenance he showed his white teeth in sympathy.
"Que bueno!" he murmured. "How good!" gathering the precious fragments in his handkerchief.
At the camp they crushed the picked ore in a mortar and panned it in the creek, and for the moment De Lancey dropped his air of preoccupancy as he stared at the streak of pure gold. Like a yellow film it lay along the edge of the last fine tailings, and when skilful washing had left it bare, it gleamed like a jewel in the pan.
"By Jove, Bud!" he cried, "that's the real stuff—and it goes a dollar to the pan easy!"
"Sure thing!" assented Bud. "Let's pound a lot of it and wash it as we go—then we'll have some getaway money when things break loose here!"
"I'll go you!" answered Phil, and Bud's heart warmed toward him as he watched him pound up a piece of ore and go to swirling the dirt in the pan.
But alas for the fond hopes he cherished! Even as he washed out the gold Phil's mind wandered far away, back to the hotel where Gracia Aragon sat watching by the window.
Her hair was the color of gold, spun fine and refined again; yes, it was worth more than this golden dross that he caught in the bottom of his pan. And what was gold if he could not have her?