They were up and about by sunrise. Murray was cool and rather sardonic in regard to the whole affair, but Mackintavers was cheerful and blithe as any boy of a prospector on his first search for earth-gold. The sight of that glittering silver ore, that wondrous ruby silver ore whose arsenic had ruined many a man and whose silver content had made thousands rich, was like a tonic in the blood of Sandy.
By evening they had gone over the ridge wherein lay the unfortunate Hassayamp, and had found no ruby silver vein. They had struck gold in promising lodes, but gold was naught before the ruby silver—if they found it. Sandy continued cheerful, and Murray was coolly complacent, doing as Mackintavers bade him but frankly without hope of success.
With the following morning, they took picks and labored valiantly until shortly before noon. Then Murray descried a little group of figures breaking its way toward them—not from the direction of Two Palms, but from the north, from the desert of the Colorado. The group resolved itself into two plodding, patient burros and the nondescript outline of a desert rat. The latter greeted them as they met him at the shack.
"Howdy, pilgrims! Seen your smoke this mornin', and sinct I was headin' in for town anyhow, I come this way. My land, but you're in style, ain't ye! Autobile an' all—say, is that a real autobile? I seen one oncet, las' time I was over to Eldorado—but sho! Here I be, forgettin' all decency! My name's George Beam, gents, though most folks address me as Sagebrush."
"Glad to meet you," said Sandy cordially, completing the introductions, "and ye better sit in with us for a snack, old-timer. Any luck?"
"Ain't kickin' none," said Sagebrush, combing the sand from his wealth of sodden gray whiskers. His eyes followed Murray. "Say, is them real bakin' powder biscuits ye got? Well, I never! They look real good, too, for them kind; I allus had a notion folks ought to study sour-dough more back in the settlements, but mebbe there's somethin' to bakin' powder——"
Sagebrush drifted along garrulously, glad of a chance to talk. Presently, when the coffee had been finished and pipes were lighted, he gazed around and grew personal.
"This here is a good place," he observed, "if it's quartz you're after, gents. If it don't intrude none, what ye lookin' for?"
Mackintavers chuckled, and produced his ruby silver samples.
"This," he answered laconically. "Know it?"