“Yes,” the brother said dully, for Pedro looked at them all as if he had suddenly lost his reason or was a man asleep.
“I say, you probably got the wrong place, just a little off the course,” Jim suggested. “Mind telling me how you marked it or remember where you found the stuff!”
“Si, senor. I am lost, wander in a circle, then I sleep and when I wake it is early morning. I wait for the sun—he is never wrong, then I start, resolved that due east I will go until I reach a stream. On a stream is always homes, settlements, maybe only trappers, but someone who will tell me how to go,” he explained and he seemed glad to go into the details.
“Sure, I understand,” Jim nodded.
“This stream I reach—nearer its source, and I follow with it to the fork. My mind is easy, I rest again and set some snares. For my dinner I get a rabbit and some fish with my hands. It is still day and I follow the water to the dry fork—and that I follow a mile and I find the platinum—quantities of it in the sharp sand.”
“There is no sand here,” Austin reminded him.
“None, but it is the dry fork—the only one,” Pedro insisted.
“Maybe it isn’t,” Jim argued. “Why not have another look?”
“This is the only dry fork,” Pedro answered.
“Did you tell anyone who might have come and got away with it?” Jim knew nothing about how platinum was found.