"I can, sir," replied Mose, hastily pocketing the dollar which Kelley thrust out to him. "I'll send him down as soon as he comes to himself."
"It always comes hard for one to see a man done up in that style," said Mr. Kelley, as he and Tom bent their steps toward the Eldorado. "It makes me hate whiskey worse than I did before."
Tom had seen so much of the little town of Fort Hamilton that he had some doubts about going to the Eldorado. Their little interview with Black Dan, if such it could be called, had taken all the conversation out of them; but when they entered the living-room of the hotel, and saw no semblance of a bar, and the men who were playing cards were doing it for fun, and not for money, and there was no sign of a drunken man around, his spirits rose wonderfully, and he walked up and placed his valise on the counter.
"Ah! here you are," exclaimed Stanley, coming up at that moment. "I wasn't able to get a room with four beds in it, but I have engaged one end of the dining-room, so that we can all be together to-night."
"Full up to the top notch," said the clerk. "Put it there, Mr. Kelley. How are you, Arrow-foot? This young man I don't remember to have seen before, but all the same I am glad to meet him."
"Yes, he's a tender-foot, and we are taking him out to have the boss grub-stake him."
"Ah! that's your business, is it? Fine business that. You may make a strike some day and come back and buy us all out. You're going right in the country for one, for there's a nugget worth eight thousand dollars for you to pitch on to."
"Yes, Elam Storm's nugget," said Stanley. "I hope to goodness you'll get it, for then we shall quit hearing so much about it."
"Oh, it's there, for one with such a reputation as that—why, man alive, it extends through twenty years! And the Red Ghost, too; you want to steer clear of him."
Tom laughed and said he would do his best to follow the clerk's advice. He had heard of Elam Storm's nugget, had even found himself thinking of it when awake, and dreaming about it when asleep. He knew that his chances for digging it up were rather slim, for he did not suppose that the man who had hid it had any idea that it would be unearthed by anyone save himself; but if he should happen to strike it with one blow of his pick! Wouldn't he be in town? He could then write back to his uncle that he had made more than the sum he had temporarily lost, made it by the sweat of his brow, and he was sure that the next letter he received from his uncle would be one telling him to come back home, and all would be forgiven. But the Red Ghost! Tom did not know what to think about him. He had been seen, never in broad daylight, and he was a terrible thing to look at. He roamed about after nightfall, tearing the mules and trampling the teamsters to death, and the worst of it was he was always to be found somewhere near the place where the nugget was supposed to be hid. Stanley once had a partner that had been done to death, and even Mr. Kelley's face grew solemn whenever he spoke of him. That was the only thing that made Tom doubtful about taking a grub-stake.