"Who were they, anyway?" asked Tom. "They were not the men who stole the skins."
"Now, wait until I tell you; I don't know."
"One of them might have been the man who got shot," I suggested.
"There are a good many things connected with this nugget that we will never find out," said Elam. "And that's one of them. We'll stay here until we get dinner, and then I will go back after my map. It is all in a lifetime. So long as I get my nugget I don't care."
"I never heard of men turning out so friendly after doing their best to rob us," said Tom, pulling the saddle off his horse. "And you met them half-way."
"Who? Me? I will always be friendly with a man who never tries to do me dirt," said Elam. "If they had had the nugget you would have seen more."
I was very glad indeed that they did not have the nugget. So long as they let us off without being hurt I was abundantly satisfied; but if they had had gold stowed away in their blankets, we probably should never have seen them. They would have slunk away among the rocks and tried to hide their booty for fear that we should try to take it away from them. Would Elam try to hide his nugget after he got it? Well, he had not got it yet by a long ways. We ate dinner where we were, and Elam shouldered his rifle, lighted his pipe, and started back after his map. He told us that we had better stay where we were, and this gave me an idea that Elam was afraid he might be shot. He was gone half an hour, and when he came back his face wore his old-time expression again.
"Have you got it?" asked Tom, who always wanted to make sure that he was in the right.
"Course I have," said Elam. "Catch up, and we'll go on. There is one thing about this map business that I don't exactly like. You see this nugget is hid in a pocket."
Of course, I was thunderstruck, but then Elam had been all over that country, and of course knew where every pocket went to. He knew which canyons ran back into the mountains and which did not.