"And like as not every mother's son of the whole bunch," Paul Bird remarked, on talking with his two chums concerning these things, "was as enthusiastic and hopeful as we are right now, expecting to be lucky enough to run across some wonderful pocket of nuggets, like Josh Kinney had done."
"Yes, that's true enough, Paul," replied Lanky. "But none of them happened to have a neat little homemade chart made by Kinney himself and telling where his cache was hidden in that five-fingered cave. There's a whole lot in having the inside track, you know."
Several hours passed.
They had been making fair and steady progress upward, and Frank could more than half guess they were presently coming to a break in the abrupt steepness marking the sheer mountainside.
"We must be close on that plateau, where we understand the deserted camp lies," he told the other boys.
"What makes you think so?" asked the pleased yet skeptical Paul.
"The lay of the land, for one thing," came the reply. "Then, again, I've been keeping my weather eye fixed on Jerry."
"Clever idea," admitted Paul; while Lanky grinned, proving that he himself must have been doing something similar.
"He's been getting more and more worked up right along," continued Frank, who made it a practice to observe everything around him, and form his own conception of its meaning.
"Reckons he's back again in the good old days," Lanky broke in just then, "when Gold Fork was on the boom, with everybody figuring on being a millionaire before the sun went down six more times. Huh! makes me laugh, the innocence of those old codgers! Poor sillies!"