"Dead!" and Thure bent and reverently straightened out the bent legs and arms and smoothed back the matted hair from the forehead. "Dead, yes, as dead as a stone; and yet a few minutes ago he was breathing and talking! What a queer thing life is anyhow! Well, it won't do neither him nor us any good to stand here thinking and talking about it. Now we must get the body to the house and give it as decent a burial as possible. I'll carry the body across the saddle in front of me. Come, let's hurry. I am getting anxious to have it over."
For the moment, so great had been the shock of the miner's sudden death, Thure and Bud had forgotten all about the dead man's marvelous tale of the Cave of Gold; but now, as Bud stooped to help lift the body from the bearskin, his eyes caught the yellow glow of the gold nugget, which lay on the skin by the side of its unfortunate finder, and the sight recalled the wondrous tale.
"What do you think of his story about finding that nugget in a cave where the floor is covered with gold nuggets as thickly as pebbles on the bed of a stony river? Do you suppose it is true or, just one of the queer notions that sometimes come to the dying?" and Bud looked wonderingly from the nugget to Thure's face.
"Great Moses, I forgot all about the gold!" and Thure's face flushed with excitement. "Quick, let's get the body on the grass and then we'll have another look at the nugget. That was a powerful queer story he told; but it might be true. And if it is true," and his eyes sparkled, "then we've just got to go to the mines and hunt up our dads and the others and get them to help us find that cave."
In a moment more they had lifted the body off the bearskin and had laid it down on the grass; and the gold nugget was in their hands.
"Glory! But isn't it heavy?" and Bud balanced the nugget in one hand. "And it looks and feels and weighs like gold! It must be gold."
"It sure does look like gold," agreed Thure. "It looks and feels just like the nuggets dad sent home, only larger. Oh, if we only could find the cave where it came from! Let me see, he said that it was in the Golden Elbow of Crooked Arm Gulch, in Lot's Canyon, near a white pillar of rock and a big tree that we must climb to the third limb—a mighty queer place I call that to find a cave! I reckon he must have been lunaticy," and Thure turned a disappointed face to Bud.
"Well, he certainly found gold, and this proves it," and Bud tossed the big nugget up in the air and caught it as it came down, "to say nothing of the five thousand dollars' worth of gold nuggets that he claims his murderers stole from him. But, didn't he say something about a map, a skin map, that would tell us how to find the cave?" and his face lighted.
"Yes, yes, that was the little roll of white skin I pulled first out of the bag," and Thure's eyes searched eagerly the ground. "Here it is!" and, stooping quickly, he picked up the little roll of white parchment-like skin that he had pulled out of the little bag and dropped on the ground, and began unrolling it with fingers that trembled with excitement, while Bud crowded close to his side, his eyes on the unrolling piece of tanned skin.
The skin was some ten inches long by seven inches wide, of a somewhat stiff texture, and tanned so that it was nearly white. On the inner side an unskilled hand had rudely drawn a map; and beneath the map was written the words: