"It's quite a long story. I'll tell it to you, briefly, while we are exploring the cave."
"Then it was a real gold mine?"
"It surely was, Master Tad. And I guess it is still. Some twenty years ago a miner who had been born and brought up in the Park Range began dropping down to Denver at more or less irregular intervals, where he exchanged nuggets of pure gold and pay dust for cash. The quality of the gold showed that it must come from a rich vein.
"Naturally, people were curious. But to all their questions, Ab
Ferguson simply said he'd got the gold out of 'the Lost Claim.'"
"Wonder they didn't follow him. I should think they might have located it in that way?" wondered Tad.
"They did. But they might as well have tried to find the pot of gold that is said to be at one end or the other of the rainbow. Ab was too much of an Indian to be caught that way."
"What happened to him finally?"
"Knocked down by a runaway team in Denver, and died three days later."
"And he didn't tell anyoue where the Claim was?"
"Not he. They've been looking for it ever since. But no one, so far as I ever heard, has got anywhere near it. There's a bunch of hard characters beating up the mountains now, hoping to get rich without work. It's dollars to sandwiches they're hoping to find the Lost Claim."