"Haven't I seen it?" demanded Elam. "It has got the marks of some of my bullets."
"It must bear the marks of a good many bullets, and I don't see why some of them did not hit it in the proper place. What do you suppose it is, anyway?"
"Why, it's a ghost, I tell you. If it wasn't, some of those bullets would have struck it in the proper spot, I bet you."
"If it's a ghost, you can't kill it."
"Can't, hey? I'll bet you that I can."
"It looked to me just like a camel," said Tom, who did not like the way Elam glared at him every time he struck on this subject.
"A camel! What's them?"
"An animal they make use of in foreign countries to carry heavy burdens for them. But, Elam, how came it to appear to you? It don't show itself to anybody else who hunts in these mountains, does it?"
"Certainly it does. The history of this nugget is known all over the country, and if any man has it on his mind, he may be a hundred miles from here, but that makes no difference; it appears to that fellow and scares him off. Now, wait till I tell you."
This brought Elam to his story, and he entered upon it a good deal as Uncle Ezra did, beginning with the massacre of the soldiers who were sent out to pay the garrison at Grayson, and ending with the fight between the two miners in the mountains. He seemed to know right where the nugget had been ever since it was unearthed. At any rate, he told a pretty straight story, and when it was ended filled up his pipe and looked at Tom to see what he thought about it.