They laughed, as Natachee had said, but Edwards caught an odd note of wistfulness in their merriment. Thad answered his question, with a brave pretense of scorn:
“There’s lost mines all over Arizona, son. Better stick to your pick and shovel if you want to eat reg’lar. You won’t pan out so mighty much, mebby, but what you do get will be real.”
“But this here Mine with the Iron Door is different some ways from all them others,” said Bob.
And again Edwards caught that wistful note in the old-timer’s voice.
“You mean that you believe there is such a mine?” he said.
“Holy Cats—No!” growled Thad. “We don’t believe in nothin’ ’til we got it where we can cash it in.”
Bob was thoughtfully refilling his pipe. “They say it was made by the old padres, away back, a hundred years before any of us prospectors ever hit this country. I know one thing that you can see for yourself, easy—there’s the ruins of a mighty old settlement or camp or somethin’ on the side of the mountain up above the Steam Pump Ranch. They say it was there that the Papagos, what worked the mine for the priests, lived. The Papagos and the padres always was friendly, you know. The padres have got a big mission, San Xavier, down in the Papago country, right now—built somethin’ like three hundred years ago, it was. I ain’t never been able myself to jest figger their idea in fixin’ up the mine with that iron door. Mebby it was on account of them only workin’ it by spells, like when they was needin’ somethin’ extra for their mission or for their church back home in Spain, where they all come from, and so wanted to shut it up when they was gone away. Then one time, the story goes, along come one of these here earthquakes, and tumbled a whole blamed mountain down on top of the works. The old priests and their Papago miners figgered it out that the landslide was an act of God—Him bein’ displeased with the way they was runnin’ things er somethin’, an’ so they was scared ever even to try to dig her up again. An’ so you see, after all these years, the trees and brush growed over the mountain again and the old mine got to be plumb lost for certain sure.”
“An’ so far as we’re consarned,” added the other pardner emphatically, “it’s goin’ to stay lost. This ain’t no country for a big mine nohow. Mineralized all right, but look at the way she’s all shot to pieces; busted forty ways for Sunday—ain’t nothin’ reg’lar nowhere, unless you was to go down a thousand or two feet, mebby, and that ain’t no prospect for a poor man, I’m a-tellin’ you. Find a little placer dirt, yes, and you might strike a good pocket once in a lifetime or so, but that ain’t to say real minin’. Take my advice, son, and don’t let this lost mine get to workin’ on you or you’ll go hungry.”
“That’s all true enough, Pardner,” said Bob, “but you know how ’tis, you can’t never tell—Gold is where you find it.”