"There, that will do, Ham," laughed Mr. Conroyal. "Come on," and he started up the east fork of the river.
Pedro, the snaky look in his eyes showing more plainly than ever, swiftly cut a small arrow, with its head pointing up the east fork of the rivulet, underneath the cross, slipped the knife back into its sheath, and followed with the pack-horses, his sallow face now all smiles. Evidently he had explicit faith in the power of his charm to keep the devils from following them up the evil-smelling stream.
That night our friends camped in Owl Gulch, a steep, narrow defile, little more than a crack in the huge walls of surrounding rock; and the next day, after much arduous and violent climbing for horses and men up the gulch and over the low back of a mountain, they passed down into a quiet little valley, just as the sun sank behind the tops of the mountains to the west.
The moment Dickson entered the valley he uttered an exclamation of pleasure.
"Hurrah!" he cried. "We've hit the trail again! I am sure this is the little valley where Stackpole and I camped the first night out from Humbug Canyon. There should be a spring bubbling out of the ground at the point of that spur of rocks where you see that little grove of trees," and he pointed to a small grove of trees that clustered about the point of a ridge of rocks that projected, like a long bony finger, from the side of the surrounding mountains down into the little valley. "We made our camp in the grove. I'll know the place for sure when we get there by a tree that Stackpole girdled," and, accompanied by Thure and Bud, he started on the run for the little grove of trees now about half a mile away.
In a few minutes the three reached the trees. The spring was there! By its side stood a tall sycamore tree, dead, its trunk having been girdled by an ax, as the deep scars in its bark still plainly showed.
"There," and Dickson pointed triumphantly to the tree, "there is my witness, the very tree that Stackpole girdled, in order that he might have plenty of dry wood the next time that he camped here. And see," and he pointed excitedly to the blackened remains of a camp-fire that did not look to be many weeks old, "there is where he camped on his way back from the Cave of Gold. We sure are in luck!" and he turned to shout the good news to the others, who were now pushing their way eagerly through the trees.
"Here is where we camp for the night," declared Mr. Conroyal, when the excitement and the jubilation of the discovery that they were surely on the right trail again had somewhat quieted down; and all at once began joyfully preparing the camp for the night.
"It's queer how things dew turn out sometimes," philosophized Ham, when all were seated around a blazing camp-fire, built from the limbs of the dead sycamore, after the supper had been eaten and all the camp duties attended to. "Th' miner that murdered that tree, jest so that he might have dry wood, was murdered himself, jest for his gold; an' here we be a-settin' around an' takin' comfort from a camp-fire built from th' dead limbs of th' dead miner's dead tree, an' bound on a hunt for th' dead miner's gold. Wal, I shore hopes we have better luck than he did."
"Oh, shut up, Ham!" and Rex threw a discarded flapjack at Ham's head, with such good aim that it landed squarely over his big mouth. "You are enough to give the dumps to a man with the tooth-ache."