"These are gold nuggets?" said I. "Our fortunes are——" and then I remembered that I had already received my wages and that none of this was mine. "Your fortune is made," said I, correcting myself.
He smiled a queer little smile at my words.
"Well," he said, "if this indicates anything, my fortune is made in the only way I could ever make a fortune."
"Indicates?" I said. "How do you mean?"
"Pooh!" said he, turning the little, brass-looking peas in his hand. "These would hardly be called a fortune. Even a bagful of these such as you have unearthed don't run to very much. There is more of this sort of stuff in our cabin," said he.
I was a little mystified.
"Search!" he said. "Search! That is enough for the present. If our labours are rewarded, then I will give you an outline of the manner and customs of the Genus Prospector—a queer, interesting race."
We thought little now of filling up the holes in that cabin. It was more a work of dismantling that we began upon, I probing all around the eaves, Apache Kid picking away with one of the miners' picks, beginning systematically at one end of the cabin and working along.
"Here," I cried, "here is another," for I had come upon just such another sack and quickly undid the string.
"Why, what is this?" said I. "What are these?"