“I was coming to that,” Larry went on. “We can post a notice and map the location so that somebody else can find it. Then, when we get back to Brewster, your uncle can send somebody in to do the work, and make the proper record. Of course we’d take a chance doing that. If anybody should come along after we go away, and be dishonest enough to destroy our notice, we’d lose out.”
“All right; that is one thing we can do,” said Purdick. “What’s the other?”
Larry frowned and looked away at the forested mountain framed in the crevice opening.
“The other is the surest thing, if we’ve got nerve enough to pull it off. If we quit on the job before it’s finished, any one of a dozen things may happen to knock us out. Maybe we can’t throw these fellows off the track so easily. If they’re keeping any kind of a lookout, they’ll be pretty sure to see us getting the jacks and our dunnage down from this perch. That would mean, of course, that they’d wait until we were out of the way, and then they’d come up here, find the mine, and ‘jump’ it. They could do that, and get their claim recorded, long before we could get back to Brewster and send somebody in here to make our ownership stick.”
“Well,” Dick cut in impatiently, “go on; what else can we do?”
Larry shook his head.
“The other thing is sort of scary, I’ll admit; or, anyway, it’s full of stumps that I don’t see any way to get over. It’s to stay right here and do the work that we meant to do, and stand them off if they come interfering with us: fight it out with ’em, I mean. They don’t know that we’ve got to hike out at the end of a week, and if we can put up a good bluff they may think we’re here to stay. Trouble is, we’ll be cooped up in here like rats in a trap. They’ll hear the dynamiting—can’t help hearing it—and we won’t dare show ourselves outside. Worse than that, the jacks will starve—and I’d rather starve myself than starve them.”
To the keen surprise of the two others it was little Purdick, pale but determined, who rose first to the demands of the occasion.
“I vote to stay and hang on and fight it out,” he said, and if his voice were a bit husky it wasn’t from fear. “If we let go—but we just mustn’t let go, that’s all! I’m not saying this because I need the money worse than you two do: for that matter, I think the mine ought to belong to Mr. Starbuck, anyway. But for us to sneak out and leave it to a wide-open chance, after we’ve found it.... You know your uncle, Dick, and I hardly know him at all; but I’m sure he’ll think mighty small of us if we go back and tell him that we found the Golden Spider and didn’t have sand enough to stay and hold on to it.”
Dick pounded the small one on the back.