“Land of love! She has gone queer, and that’s a fact. Does the mite think that there little donkey can outrun your horse or mine? After her, stranger, lest she do some harm to herself.”
Ninian smiled softly and touched Nimrod lightly, and in a moment all three were again racing over the mesa, side by side, the girl foremost, and the men reining in their horses lest they should forestall her of the goal to which she aspired. The reporter, as eager and almost as wise as she, but good Samson completely in the dark and growing a trifle angry over the fact.
When they came up to it the place seemed utterly deserted. The doors opened to the touch and in all but one of the three small buildings the windows were broken. The third was in better repair and was evidently sometimes still used by somebody. There was a bed, or cot, spread with blankets, a coal-oil stove, some canned meats and biscuits, and a well-wrapped gun.
But Jessica’s attention passed these details over.
“The rocks! They are the very same as in my dream and he told me of them when he drew the map. Is that in your pocket, Mr. Sharp? Oh! is it?”
“Sure.” He drew it forth and held it so that Samson, too, could see.
“Come! In the dream there was a little cave beneath the rocks and in the cave a box. You know it, Samson, the black tin box in which the valuable papers were kept. We could find it nowhere, mother nor I, but I shall find it here and in it–oh! in it–there will be that title deed! You look, ‘boys,’ I can’t, I tremble so.”
Samson forced his great length downward and inward under the bowlders and found, as Jessica had felt sure, a small but perfectly dry and well-protected cave. The rocks and live oaks screened it from the sight of those who did not know it existed, and it would never have been suspected that there was aught but solid ground beneath those jagged stones.
The horses and Scruff were willing to stand without tying, and Ninian was, in any case, too excited now to have remembered them. He saw that Lady Jess was trembling, indeed, and trembled himself. If this should prove a disappointment, how would she bear it?
But it was not to be that. From the little cave there presently issued a mighty shout. That is it would have been mighty had the space been large enough to give it vent. As it was, it came like the subdued roar of a wild animal, and it was almost surprising to see the soles of Samson’s boots emerge from the opening instead of furry feet.