“I never expected I’d get it that bad. Why, it’s worse than the factory boy who has his picture taken down at Coney Island sitting in a pasteboard automobile.” Then he laughed outright. One after another, he sent five of the pictures shooting down into the swift river below. The sixth, as evidence of his boyish exuberance, he buried in his hip pocket. “I’m over that now, anyway,” he said with another laugh.
At dinner, Mr. Cook told him that two more men had been sent up the river to stop the search for the missing thief. There had also been a conference in Mr. Cook’s office and Marshal Wooley and an aide with an extra horse had set out to recover and bring in Hassell’s body. By night, Roy had exhausted the sights of Bluff, and photographed most of them, including Utah Banning’s hut.
The town had few visitors, and almost no sightseers. For that reason, the trading stores were not stocked with curios. A few things that Roy bought were of real Indian manufacture or were articles made for the use of the men of the wilderness. Navajo silver rings, bracelets and chains were so cheap that the boy could not resist purchasing some of them. One ring struck him particularly. Instead of the prevailing silver, it was of copper, a beautiful oxydized brown. For a setting, it had a square of deep, almost translucent turquoise of the pure, sky blue. He bought it for himself at a cost of three dollars.
When Mr. Cook came home late in the afternoon, Roy was taking his ease on the gallery, refreshed with another washup, and twirling the exquisitely colored ring in his fingers. The moment Mr. Cook saw it, his eyes lit up with enthusiasm.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked impulsively.
“At that old fellow’s down by the postoffice. Three dollars,” he added, with some pride.
His host examined and fondled the ring with the gentle touch of a connoisseur. Then he sighed:
“That’s the way it goes,” he said at last almost scowling. “I’ve been snooping around desert towns and Indian camps nearly six years, keepin’ my eye open for one of these, and I never saw one till this minute. Where I’ve been rakin’ with a fine-tooth comb,” he added, changing his smile to a scowl, “you stumble over the thing I can’t find.”
“Why,” exclaimed Roy, jumping up and taking another look at the ring, “what is it? I just—”
“That,” broke in Mr. Cook, “is the rarest speciment of Navajo metal work that you can find. And that stone—you won’t see its like in Tiffany’s. No matrix there—the true turquoise. As for the copper—well, look at it!”