"Who is he? You never mentioned him before."
"Well, he is a sharp one. He came out here long after I did, and had sense enough to go to herding cattle, while here I am and haven't got anything except the clothes I stand in. It's all on account of that nugget, too. If the robbers had stolen it and got well away with it I might have been in the same fix. Well, it's all in a lifetime."
"I should think you would give it up," said Tom. "You go working after it day after day—why, you must have been after it fourteen years."
"Shall I give it up when I've got the map of it right here?" said Elam, tapping his ditty-bag, which was hung across his chest under his shirt. "I am nearer to it now than I have been before, and you had better talk to those who have made fun of me all these years. 'Oh, Elam's a crank; let him alone, and when he gets tired looking for the nugget he'll come to his senses and go to herding cattle.' That's what the folks around here have had to say about me ever since I can remember; but I'll get the start of all of them, you see if I don't."
Elam began to look wild when he began to talk about the nugget, and Tom was glad to change the subject of the conversation.
"Who is the other fellow?" said he. "You said there were two of them."
"The other fellow is a tender-foot; he don't claim to be anything else. I'll bet you, now that I have got over my excitement, that I have been talking about his father. His father commands a post within forty miles of the place where he is now visiting, but I don't know one soldier from another. They all look alike to me, and I didn't think of the relationship they bore to each other. No matter; he treated me mighty shabby, and I shall always think hard of soldiers after that."
At the end of half an hour they came out of the scrub oaks and found themselves in front of a neat little cabin which reminded Tom of the negro quarters he had seen in Mississippi. There were two boys standing in front of the cabin, and Tom had no trouble in picking out Carlos Burton. There was an independent air about him that somehow did not belong to the tender-foot, and when Elam introduced him in his off-hand way, this boy was the first to welcome him.
"This fellow is Tom Mason, and I want you to know him and treat him right. He got into a little trouble down in Mississippi where he used to live, and came out here to get clear of it. Know him, boys."
The boys, surprised as they were, were glad to shake hands with Tom, because he was Elam's friend; but they were still more anxious to know how Elam had come among them for the fourth time robbed of his furs, and what he had to say about it. There were some things about him that didn't look exactly right. There was his hand, which was still done up the way the doctor left it, and the mark on his horse's neck, both of which proclaimed that Elam had been in something of a fight; but they didn't push him, for they knew they would hear the whole of his story when he got inside of the cabin.