"Ef she only knowed what I'm a goin' fur!" muttered Jim to himself, as he went to "catch up" his horse, and pack up two or three days' rations of bread and meat. "But I ain't goin' to let on about it to a single soul. It's best to keep this business to myself, I reckon. 'Peared like 'twas a hint of that kind she give me, the other day, when she said, 'The gods help them that help themselves, Mr. Harris.' Such a heap o' sense as that gal's got! She's smarter'n John Edwards and me, and Missouri Joe, to boot: but I'm a-gainin' on it a leetle—I'm a-gainin' on it a leetle," concluded Jim, slowly, puckering his parched and sunburnt lips into a significant expression of mystery.
What it was he was "gainin' on," did not appear, for the weight of his thoughts had brought him to a dead-stand, a few feet from the fence, on the hither side of which was the animal he contemplated riding. At this juncture of entire absence of mind, the voice of John Edwards, hailing him from the road, a little way off, dissolved the spell:
"I say, Jim," hallooed Edwards; "if you discover that mine, I will give you half of it, and an interest in the ranch."
The words seemed to electrify the usually slow mind to which the idea was addressed. Turning short about, Jim, in a score of long strides, reached the fence separating him from Edwards.
"Will you put that in writin'?"
"To be sure, I will," answered John, nodding his head, with a puzzled and ironical smile.
"I'll go to the house with ye, an' hev it done to onct," said Jim, sententiously. "I hev about an hour to spar, I reckon."
John Edwards was struck by the unusual manner of the proverbially deliberate man, who had served him with the same unvarying "slow and sure" faithfulness for years; but he refrained from comments. Jim, in his awkward way, proved to be more of a man of business than could have been expected.
"I want a bond fur a deed, Mr. Edwards. That's the best way to settle it, I reckon."
"That is as good a way as any; the discovery to be made within a certain time."