“What was the matter? Did they do you up?”
“Well, I’ll tell you about the whole business. My name’s Bill Frank, and I’ve been here in the mountains since—well, a long time, huntin’ for the lost Dick Winter’s mine. I found it, too. It was right in here behind me, but he’d worked it clean out. I reckon it was nothin’ but a pocket, but a mighty big, rich one, and then the vein had pinched. So then I went to work and hunted for the gold he’d taken out. I found it all, or all he told me about. You see, I knew Dick. I was with him when he died, and he told me what he’d got. There was a Dutch oven and a pail and a coffee pot, all full of lumps, and two tomato cans full of little ones, and a whisky flask full of dust, and a gunny sack full of ore that was just lousy with gold. Much good it will do me now, or them other fellows, either, damn their souls! Well, I’d hid the coffee pot and the pail and the Dutch oven and the whisky flask and one tomato can down by the spring, where I had my camp. I knew pretty well where the rest of it was, after I’d found that much, and I came up here two days ago, in the morning, and looked around till I found the gunny sack. I brought it here and threw it inside this place, which poor Dick Winters had blasted out, never dreamin’ of such a thing as that anybody would show up. Then I went away again to find the other tomato can, and when I came back two men were here packin’ out my sack of ore.”
“What did they look like?” Nick exclaimed.
“One was tall and thin and youngish like, with a bad look, and the other was short and stout and a good deal older, and he had a red, round face.”
“The damned, ornery scrubs! They’re the ones we’re after,” Tom exclaimed, jumping up. “You didn’t kill ’em, stranger?” he added pleadingly.
“I guess I did. I sure reckon you’ll find ’em scattered promiscuous down the canyon. I drew my gun and told ’em to drop it, that it was mine. They began to shoot, and so did I, and I backed ’em out, and made ’em drop the sack, and started ’em on the run. They couldn’t shoot as well as I could, and I know I hit one of ’em in the head and the other one mighty near the heart. I poked my head out for a last blaze at ’em, to make sure of my work, and the short one, he let drive at me and took me in the lung, and that’s the one that did me up. But they’d broken one leg before.”
“Can’t you-all pull through if we tote you out of here?” asked Nick.
Bill Frank shook his head. His breath was beginning to fail and his voice sank to a whisper with each sentence.
“No; I’m done for. You can’t do nothin’ for me.” Then he turned to Tom. “Pardner, I did you a bad trick when I saw you before, though I had to do it. And when I told you good-bye I said I hoped that if I ever saw you again I could treat you whiter than I did that time. Well, I’ve got the chance now. That tomato can and that gunny sack are over there behind your pardner, and you and him can have ’em. The other tomato can and the whisky flask and the coffee pot and the pail and the Dutch oven are under some big rocks behind a boulder south from the spring, if them two thieves didn’t carry ’em away, and you and your pardner can have it all. The trail takes you to the spring.”
Tom was staring at him in wide-eyed amazement, trying to recall his face. Nick exclaimed hurriedly: