“Wish we were doing the same!” squeaked Left-over. “I’d buy pie; all I could eat.”
“I don’t,” announced Billy Cody. “Do you, Dave! I want the fun of finding before I have the fun of spending.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Baxter; “it’s a heap more fun to earn what you get.”
A man on horseback was wending way down the trail from the west. It was an exception to meet anybody travelling east; he was the first since they had left the stage line. If he came from the Pike’s Peak country he ought to bring much news.
So, as he met them, Captain Hi halted the Hee-Haw Express and hailed him.
“Howdy, stranger? Bound far?”
“To the States if I can get there.”
“Come from far?”
“Far enough, mister. I come from the Cherry Creek diggin’s.”
Hurrah! Davy had been eyeing him keenly. He was an unshaven, thin but powerful man, with cadaverous face and fierce black eyes; and he bestrode a mule as cadaverous as himself. He carried a musket; and that seemed to be about all. Anyway, his saddle-bags were disappointingly flat. But he may have had his gold stowed out of sight or deposited to his account somewhere.