The rancher shook his head. “No. I answered only one of his letters, I think. I couldn’t see any sense in writing a stranger, so I let the correspondence lapse. Stony, as you call him, never mentioned my father, except to say he had known him. But he did let on he owed me a great debt. I never could figure that out.”
“He sent you a map,” Mr. Livingston said. “A chart to an area where he claims there is a cache of gold. He called it Headless Hollow.”
“Have you heard of it?” Jack asked, noticing the startled expression of the rancher’s face.
“Well, yes. Not by that name. But it must be the same isolated valley where my father lost his life—and the same area where Joe Hansart disappeared.”
“Another prospector?” Ken inquired.
“Joe disappeared six or seven years ago. He set off into the canyons and never came back. It’s a bad locality.”
Warner seemed suddenly to remember his manners.
“Come into the house,” he invited them. “We’ll have a spot of coffee and give that map the once-over.”
Chapter 12
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
“See that jagged peak with the patch of snow almost at its tip? Right below is stunted timber land. Well, that’s Crazy Mountain. I figure Headless Hollow is somewhere in there behind those tumbles of rock.”