“You tell, if you can,” Larry laughed, and they started out to follow the trail.
Fortunately for the empty stomachs, they didn’t have to go very far before they saw Dick and the burros coming over a wooded hill to the right. At the “reunion,” as Dick called it, they quickly built a fire; and while the coffee water was heating and the bacon sizzling in the pan, Dick told how he had lost his way and found a hermit.
“We were up before day, and Daddy Longbeard—I don’t know any other name for him—came along with me far enough to make sure that I wouldn’t get off the track again,” he wound up. “When he left me, two or three miles back yonder in the woods, he was still acting like a man half stunned—over what I told him last night about his mine.”
“Sure you didn’t make any mistake about that ore, are you?” Larry inquired.
“Not a chance! It’s a telluride, all right enough, and plenty rich, I should say, from the size of the button I got out of one small test sample.”
“Well, I guess you paid for your night’s lodging, anyway,” Purdick put in; but Dick Maxwell laughed and shook his head.
“No; it was the other way round; the old man paid me for telling him about his bonanza. See here what he gave me.” And he showed them the worn map with the magic circle on it.
Of course, this revival of the romantic possibilities wrapped up in the summer’s outing stirred up some excitement, and the coffee boiled over and threatened to put the fire out while they were studying the old map. It was Larry who reached up and took hold of things and brought them down to the every-day level again.
“The Golden Spider is all right, fellows, if we should happen to run across it, but we all know that there isn’t one chance in a million, not even with the help of Daddy Longbeard’s circle—which, after all, is only a guess, as he said it was. We don’t want to get bitten by the gold prospector’s bug and go crazy like so many of ’em do. We’re out for good old practical business, and we mustn’t forget that Mr. Starbuck is paying the bills. Let’s eat breakfast and then hit the grit for the summer work field.”
“Right you are, Larry, old scout!” said Purdick, getting back on his job of frying the breakfast flapjacks. “I can begin to see now how easy it is for people to go nutty on this gold proposition. Turn to and eat these pancakes while they’re hot—they’ll stay with you longer that way.”