"It's gold!" Charley's voice came tense and stammery. "Anyway, it's soft."
"Do you suppose the whole rock's full of gold?"
"Maybe. Let's knock off some more. Maybe the whole hill's full of gold—all the rock! Hurrah!"
"Hurrah! Maybe it'll get solider, deeper we go," cheered Billy, hopefully.
Charley hammered with his boot heel and pried with his knife; Billy hammered with his rifle-butt; and when they knocked off even a chip, it showed traces of gold. Why, wherever the rock stuck up, making little humps and furrows, it seemed to be the one kind: quartz-blotched and yellow-spotted.
"Hurrah!" again cheered Charley. "We ought to stake off claims. Who found it? I saw the bear."
"And I shot the bullet," returned Billy.
"Well, there's enough for all, anyway. It'll belong to the whole party. What'll we call it? Grizzly? Lucky Bullet?"
They were so busy searching and gloating that they had forgotten the pack animals below and even the whereabouts of the men of the party. On a sudden, as if replying to Charley's queries, Billy cried out excitedly:
"Somebody else has been up here! Here's a little pile of loose rock, and a stake with a board sign on it, that says——shucks. Can't quite make it out. Come on and help me."