"I hope so. But it isn't altogether the gold that's taking me back.
There's something more attractive."
"So I imagined."
"I thought you would understand." Curly's voice was eager now. "She'll not escape me this time. Gad, she's a beaut! But as wild as a hawk."
"An' so ye think ye'll corner her, eh?" There was a peculiar note in Samson's voice which Reynolds was quick to detect, but which Curly missed.
"Just you wait an' see," the latter reminded. "That old cuss thinks he's got a regular Gibraltar behind those hills with his lousy Indians. But I'll show him a thing or two."
"Ye've never been thar, have ye?" Samson queried.
"Never. But the bird comes out of her nest sometimes, ye know, an' then——"
"You'll be the hawk, is that it?" Samson asked as the other paused.
"Oh, I'll be around," Curly laughed. "One doesn't run across the likes of her every day, an' she's the gold I'm really after."
"Wall, all I kin say is this," the prospector replied, as he rose slowly to his feet, "that ye'd better be mighty keerful, young man. That Giberalter, as ye call it, is guarded by a lion that ain't to be fooled with. He's got claws that reach from sun-up to sun-down as several smarter ones than you have found out to their sorrow. Leave him alone, an' he'll bother nobody. But interfere with that lass of his, an' the hull north won't be big enough to hide ye. That's my warnin', an' if yer not a fool ye'll heed it."