“What?” questioned Patton.
“The bowl in the rock!”
Patton turned to his wife. “That’s the spring I told you about,” he explained. “I went out there four years ago with a prospector. You wouldn’t believe, Polly, that water could be found in a place like that—a regular ash-pile, you might say. But there it is. The bowl is hollowed out as pretty as can be. And the water comes in drop by drop—just at night, though. It leaks in through a split that’s so fine you couldn’t get a knife-blade into it. But what comes in doesn’t run out, because the bowl’s good-sized, and if the buzzards don’t drink the water up, the sun does.”
Polly made no comment. She sat very still, watching Blandy steadily. Her face was as pale as it had been scarlet at mid-afternoon.
“The lead ain’t more’n a stone’s throw from the bowl,” went on Blandy; “—to the right up the slope. Say! think of the feller’s that’ve missed it!—’cause they was so all-fired glad to find water that they forgot all about gold. But I found it. I was comin’ down the slope, headin’ for a drink, when my darned feet got all tangled up and I took a double-ender. Wal, sir, when I sit up to feel if any bones was broke, here was the blossom rock, lookin’ me straight in the eye!—yeller chunks, Patton, as big as pine-nuts!”
Patton’s black eyes were glistening. “How high’ll that rock run?” he asked.
“Turrible high—even where it don’t show colour. There was a fortune right in sight—without thinkin’ of what’s laying behind. There’s all we’ll ever want out there—a chance to do a few things for our friends, and our relations—them that we like; and grand houses, and outomobiles, and fine clothes, and horses, and folks to wait on us, and travellin’, and edication, and—and what’ll make Polly a queen!”
“Did you put up a written notice?”
“Shore.”
“Have you got some specimens?”