"We'll have to go and see," uttered George; who, as a tenderfoot, was eager to see everything.
Presently the words of the man in the wagon-box could be heard above the refrain of the Lord's Prayer around the platform. He was somebody whom Terry never had noticed before in the gulch—a thin, slab-sided man with carroty hair and beard and dressed in prospector's clothes; wore a revolver; no preacher, he. Certainly not, for——
"Yes, gentlemen," he was saying, "not more'n fifty miles from here there's a place where every one o' you can wash your pound o' gold dust to a man per day. Me and my partners are the first white men in there; we've made our locations and our laws and have started a new camp that'll be a world-beater. Tarryall, we've named it; in the big South Park: the best and richest country on the face o' the earth. As soon as I get provisions here I'm goin' back in, and I'll take any o' you who want to go with me, on the understandin' you'll respect our rights as first locators. There's plenty room, gentlemen—and a pound o' gold a day per man waitin' to be dug. It's yours, gentlemen, if you want it. We'll welcome you to Tarryall. Only fifty miles to fortune, remember. I'll show you the way, but I start early in the mornin'."
The crowd jostled excitedly. On the outskirts George clutched Terry hard by the sleeve.
"Let's go!" he exclaimed. "Did you hear? A pound a day! That beats these diggin's. Cracky! I knew there was some place where a fellow could dig his pound a day. We can go and make our strike, and then 'twon't matter whether we sell these claims in here or not."
"All right; let's," agreed Terry, fired with the same idea. "We'll locate for ourselves and Harry, too; or if they won't allow boys to locate in their own names we'll locate in Harry's name and my dad's and your dad's! Harry'd never go to any of those other big strikes—the Bobtail, or the one in Russell Gulch, or a lot more. We've stuck here, when we might have been getting rich somewhere else."
"Come on back to the cabin and pack up," urged George.
They turned, when a voice at their elbow stayed them.
"Got the fever again, have you?"
He was the "Root Hog or Die" professor.