"Haw-ha! You had about as much chance of finding gold here as you would in New Orleans," said Elam, as soon as his merriment would allow him to speak. "The only gold here is my nugget, and that was buried two years ago. Didn't he tell you about that?"
"Yes, he told me about the nugget, but he also told me that by digging after it I might strike another gold mine, as some others had done before me. But if I ever go again, I don't want to follow such a man as went before me."
"Who was it? Was it somebody who was working on Parsons' place?"
"Yes. He was an elderly man, who seemed to take more interest in me than anybody else. He told me that the only reason he didn't strike the nugget was because he didn't dig in the right place."
"Haw-ha!" laughed Elam.
"And the only reason he didn't dig in the right place was because the nugget couldn't be thrown out with two or three spadefuls of earth," continued Tom. "I followed along after him for two weeks, and in every camping-place there were two shovelfuls of dirt flung out. If a hen had been scratching for that nugget, she would have made better headway."
"He was on the right track, anyhow," said Elam. "If he had kept on till he came to that pocket, he would have found it. That would have given me a job, for I would a heap sooner find it in the dirt than take it out of a man's pack."
"If a man was to find that nugget——"
"Yes, sir, I would," said Elam savagely. "It is mine, and I'm a-going to have it, I don't care who unearths it. Do you suppose you could find your way back to that pocket?"
"No, sir; I couldn't," said Tom, drawing a long breath of dismay. "In the first place, there's the Red Ghost. If you had seen it——"