"Land o' nothin'!" rebuffed the spokesman of the party. "Turn back, turn back, 'fore you starve to death."
"Why? Are you from the Pike's Peak mines?"
"We're from the Cherry Creek diggin's, young feller, but we didn't see any mines there nor nowheres else. It's all a fake, and we're on our way to tell the people so and save 'em their bacon."
"Aren't you bringing any gold?" exclaimed Terry. "Have you been there long?"
"Long! Gold!" And he turned his pocket inside out. "That's the size of your elephant. We've been there since last November, sonny, and the gold is in your eye. That Pike's Peak craze is the biggest hoax ever invented. It's just a scheme of a few rascals to sell off town lots. They want to get people to come out yonder; and gold is the only thing that'll persuade 'em into the barrenest, porest country on the face of the 'arth. We've been thar, so we know. We couldn't get out, in the winter; but everybody's leavin' now, to tell the folks along all the trails to face back and go home."
Terry felt a sinking of the heart. Harry also seemed to sober.
"What gold is it that's been sent out of there, then?" he asked.
"Californy gold! Fetched through from Californy. Never was taken out of that Pike's Peak country at all. Californy gold, used to fool the people with, back in the States."
"But my father brought home two hundred dollars in gold, and he found it there somewhere, himself—near Pike's Peak," argued Terry, with sudden thought. "We've already got a mine!"
"He did, did he? Waal, if he did he was lucky, and he was luckier to get out with it. Thar may be a little gold—thar's gold to be washed from 'most any mountain stream, but you can't eat gold. Yon country's a freezin' country and a starvation country and an Injun country, fit for neither civilized man nor beast. The government'll need to step in and forbid people goin' to it. The hull of it ain't wuth an east Kansas acre."