The quizzical smile turned itself into a quiet laugh.
“No. I spent a good month of the following summer looking for it; and after the story got out, others looked for it, too. It has never been found, and probably never will be unless some prospector just happens to stumble upon it accidentally. One mountain is very much like another in the Little Hophras, and Brock couldn’t name his mountain, or describe it so that it could be recognized. You may take his sketch map along with you if you like, though it won’t help you any more than it did me. If I were going to try again, I shouldn’t bother about maps or mountains; I should look for a crack in a cliff, and a golden-bodied spider hanging in its web. Now you see what an excellent chance you have of finding the lost bonanza! But I mustn’t keep you any longer listening to these old fairy tales. Good-by, and good luck to you. Don’t forget to send word back any time you happen to meet anybody coming out of the hills.”
Since the time was now really growing pretty short, the three did not stand upon the order of their going. As they ran through the corridor toward the elevators, they saw the crippled man hobbling along in the same direction, and making as good speed with the long crutch-stride and hop as they did in a dog-trot. That being the case, the cripple caught the same descending elevator that they did; but on the sidewalk they lost him quickly; were a bit astonished to see him climb nimbly into a waiting taxi and get himself whirled away down the avenue.
“Huh!” said Dick, as they hurried along toward the railroad station. “‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’ That fellow looks like a beggar, but he rides in a taxi, just the same. I wonder where he is going in such a tearing hurry?”
There was obviously no answer to this, and the incident was presently forgotten in their arrival at the station. The westbound train was in, and both the Maxwell and Donovan families were on hand to see the prospectors off for the summer. Little Purdick, having nobody to see him off, got the packs and rifles and put them aboard, and when he had finished this job the leave-takings were over and the train was pulling out.
“‘Good-by, everybody; good-by, everything!’” Dick sang, hanging out of the last-left-open vestibule; and when he went in to join his two companions he was brimming over with enthusiasm.
“Hey, you old stick-in-the-muds!” he cried. “She’s begun at last—the good old summer out-of-doors! We’re due in Nophi at one o’clock, and to-night we’ll be sleeping out under the stars! Wouldn’t that jar you, Purdy—you old factory-town rat!”
But little Purdick did not answer, because, just at that moment, he had caught sight of a roughly dressed man with a crutch settling himself in a seat at the far end of the day-coach in which they were riding, and the singular prevalence of cripples in this part of the Far West struck him as being so odd that he scarcely heard what Dick was saying.
The two-hour train rush down the Timanyoni, through Little Butte, and up a wide mountain valley to the little smelter town of Nophi, nestling fairly under the shadow of the Greater Hophras, was a journey made without incident—unless dinner in the dining-car, their last civilized meal, as Dick named it, could be called an incident. When the boys left the train they found that a telegram from Brewster had outrun them, and Uncle Billy’s smelter-superintendent friend was at the platform to meet them; also, that the two burros, already packed with the provisions, tools and camping outfit, were waiting under a near-by ore shed.
As they were preparing to start, Mr. Broadwick gave them a hint or two.