“Why, no!” said Dick. “Why should I say anything like that?”
“Most fellers would. They’d go into court and swear that they made the discovery. You did make it, ye know. I might ’a’ gone on diggin’ in that mount’in till kingdom come, without ever payin’ any attention to anything but that streak o’ sulphurets.”
“That’s all right,” Dick hastened to say. “I’m mighty glad I happened to think of testing the stuff, and you don’t owe me anything at all. Why, good land—I’m your guest!”
Slowly the old man heaved himself out of his chair, and, crossing the room, he began to arrange Dick’s bed in the single built-in bunk. Dick protested at once, saying that he could roll himself in his blankets before the fire. But the newly made bonanza king wouldn’t have it that way.
“No,” he said; “the best I’ve got ain’t none too good for you, son. Besides, I reckon I don’t want to go to bed, nohow. I reckon I got to set up and think a spell afore I can ever go to sleep again.”
Seeing that it would be a real charity to give the old man a chance to “set up and think,” Dick made ready to turn in. It was not until he was sitting on the edge of the bunk to take his lace boots off that the old man fished in a grimy cigar-box and brought out a printed map so old and worn that it was falling apart in the creases. Spreading the map out on Dick’s knees, he pointed to a pencilled circle enclosing a certain area that looked as if it were all mountain and canyon.
“I let on to you that Jim Brock and me had been pardners once, son, and so we was. I don’t know where Jim’s mine is, but I do know some’eres near where he was prospectin’ when he found it. That circle’s maybe five mile acrosst it, and I reckon if you was to look close enough inside of it, maybe you’d find the Golden Spider. Put the map in your pocket. It’s your’n.”
CHAPTER V
FOOTLOOSE AND FREE
When Larry and Purdick thought they had found the place where Dick had stopped and made a fire, and had then had some mysterious thing happen to him, they soon realized that they couldn’t hope to trail the burro hoofprints very far in the growing dusk. But they did manage to follow them to the nearest crossing of the little stream, and here, where a patch of wash sand made the record as plain as a book page, Larry heaved a sigh of relief.