"So Elam has really got a map of the place where that nugget is hid?" were the first words he uttered. He didn't seem to care a straw about the Indians, but he did care about the gold. "I wish I knew the man he shot to get it."
After that the evening was just what you would expect of one spent in a hunter's camp, or one passed in a sheep-herder's ranch, which was the same thing. We ate supper; then those who were inclined to the weed enjoyed their good-night smoke, and talked of ghosts, Indians, and sheep-herder's life until we were all tired out and went to bed. We had regular bunks to sleep in, and could thrash around all we had a mind to without fear of disturbing anyone else. The foreman got up once to replenish the fire and take a look at the weather, and I heard him say, when he crawled back into his bunk, that it was a clear, cold night—just the one that sheep enjoy.
When I awoke I found the foreman busy in the storeroom in putting up our three months' supplies and Uncle Ezra engaged in cooking breakfast. Ben was seated at one end of the table, engaged in writing a letter to his father, and Elam had gone out after a certain stockman to carry it to the fort for him. It was dark, and you couldn't see a thing.
"I think it best to let the boy's father know when he is well off," said Uncle Ezra, returning my greeting. "It aint everybody who would go to that trouble, I confess—sending a lone man off in a country that has been infested with Indians. But I know how it is myself. If I had a boy——"
"You have got one," I said. "There's Elam."
"Elam!" said the frontiersman in a tone of contempt. "Elam went to work and got himself into a fuss without saying a word to me about it. Elam! now he's got a map that he thinks will show him where the gold is hidden."
"But don't you think there is something hidden there?" asked Ben.
"Now, wait till I tell you. I don't know; but every scrap he gets hold of he thinks it is a map. That's what makes me mad at Elam. And you, dog-gone you! You have got better sense than that."
I had heard all I wanted to out of Uncle Ezra. It was plain that he didn't think there was anything in that map. Well, as Elam said, it was all in a lifetime. My time wasn't worth anything to me, for I had men to do the work, and if I made a botch of it, if there wasn't anything to be made by digging up that gully, there was one thing out of the way. Elam was bound to become a cattle-herder in case this thing failed. He was determined to go to Texas, for he couldn't live there and have that nugget thrown at him by every man he met, and I would go with him. Uncle Ezra had often made offers for my cattle, intending to leave sheep-herding on account of the wolves, and invest all his extra money in steers, and if this thing turned out a failure he could have them and welcome. I would be as deep in the mud as Elam was, and I didn't care to have the thing thrown up at me all the time. Texas was the land of promise with us fellows, any way. The fellows there had got into the way of driving cattle to northern markets and selling them, and in that way we could at least see our friends once every year. So I didn't care what Uncle Ezra said about it.
In about an hour Elam came back with the stockman of whom he had been in search. His name was Sandy; I never heard him called by any other name, and if his pluck only equalled his red hair and whiskers he certainly had lots of it. Of course we had to go through with the Red Ghost and Tom's being lost, the discovery of the map and Elam's escape from the Indians, but Sandy never said a word about it. He just sat on his camp-stool with his elbows resting on his knees, and looked up at Uncle Ezra. When the latter got through with his story he simply said: