“You think there are mineral riches up in the mountains then?”
“Think, Master Bart! Oh, I’m sure of it. But where is it to be found? P’r’aps we’re walking over it now, but there’s no means of telling.”
“No,” said Bart thoughtfully, “for everything about is so vast.”
“That’s about it, my lad, and all the harm I wish master is that he may find as much as he wants.”
“I wish he may, Joses,” said Bart, “or that I could find a mine for him and Miss Maude.”
“Well, my lad, we’ll keep our eyes open while we are out, only we have so many other things to push, and want to push on farther so as to get among better pasture for the horses. They don’t look in such good condition as they did.”
There was good reason for this remark, their halting-places during the past few days having been in very sterile spots, where the tall forbidding rocks were relieved by very little that was green, and patches of grass were few.
But these were the regions most affected by the Doctor, who believed that they were the most likely ones for discovering treasure belonging to nature’s great storehouse, untouched as yet by man. In these barren wilds he would tramp about, now climbing to the top of some chine, now letting himself down into some gloomy forbidding ravine, but always without success, there being nothing to tempt him to say, “Here is the beginning of a very wealthy mine.”
Every time they journeyed on the toil became greater, for they were in most inaccessible parts of the mountain range, and they knew by the coolness of the air that they must now be far above the plains.
Bart and Joses worked hard to supply the larder, the principal food they obtained being the sage grouse and dusky grouse, which birds they found to be pretty plentiful high up in the mountains wherever there was a flat or a slope with plenty of cover; but just as they were getting terribly tired of the sameness of this diet, Bart made one morning a lucky find.