Stubbs had not been gone more than ten minutes before he heard a shout from Wilson and hurrying to his side found him peering into a small stone hut scarcely large enough to hold more than a single man.
As the two stood there they felt for the first time the possibilities which lay before them. The quest loomed larger and more real than ever before. From a half ghost treasure it became a reality. As the first actual proof of the verity of the map which they possessed it gave them a keener vision of what was to come.
“Lord, if it should be true!” gasped Stubbs.
“Man––man, it is!” cried Wilson. “I feel it 246 tingling through every vein. We are on the very edge of the biggest treasure a man ever found!”
“What––did the paper say there was? Can you remember?”
“Gold plate and jewels––over six hundred pieces. No one knows how valuable they are. Each one might be a fortune in itself.”
“Gawd!”
Stubbs sat down on the threshold of the little hut. He drew out his pipe.
“Let’s jus’ think on ’t a minute,” he said.
It was not so much the money value these things represented that appealed to the men. They could not grasp that. Nor was it the intrinsic beauty of the objects themselves. It was just the thrilling consciousness of being within that golden zone which had been sought by so many during so many centuries. Men from the four corners of the earth had come in search of what now lay within a day’s reach of them; brave men, men who had made history. Yet they had failed; the mountains had kept their secret and the little blue lake had laughed at their efforts.