“And I too,” said the doctor. “This part of his narrative is very suggestive of a fever dream; but he spoke calmly, and as if he believed every word to be true. There was a simple earnestness, too, in the way in which he told me of how, dried-up as he was, he revelled in the ice-cold water that trickled down from the mountain-peaks in stream after stream which only meandered for a few hundred yards before every drop was soaked up in the burning sand.”
“That’s the worst of the salt plains southward,” said Griggs quietly.
“I suppose so,” said the doctor, “and this sounded very simple and truthful, but it seemed to me that here fiction was a good deal mingled with fact. He went on to say that these were the mountains of which he and his friends had been in search, for he was not long in discovering now that those hills were composed of the richest gold ore, while in a central tableland some two thousand feet up stood the remains of the city of which he had been in search.
“This proved to be completely ruined, one mass of crumbling stone wall; but every here and there he discovered proofs that the old inhabitants had utilised the rich metal contained in the hills by which they were surrounded. The place had evidently been destroyed in some catastrophe, in all probability by the attack of an enemy, for not a trace save charred beams remained of the woodwork that must have been plentifully used, and in many parts he found the scattered and gnawed bones of the slain.”
“I should like to explore that place, doctor and neighbours all,” said Griggs, “but I’m afraid that the nation of people who built that city belonged to the imagination.”
“That was my own idea,” said the doctor gravely, “especially when the poor fellow told me that he made his home there for years, taking possession of a little temple-like place, covering the roof in with cedar-boughs to keep off the sun, and living upon what he could secure by means of his gun.”
“And always getting a fresh supply of powder and shot from Noo York by mail, eh, neighbours?”
“The narrative is most improbable,” continued the doctor, “but it does contain elements open to belief.”
“But if he had discovered such treasure as that,” said Wilton, “why didn’t he get back to civilisation, so as to profit by it?”
“To be sure,” said Bourne. “But what about the Indians who ought to have been there to watch over the gold?”