"There's more in the story than that comes to," declared Mr. Banta. "Let us go out and look at the skins; we will hear the straight of the matter when Julian comes in."
The skins were rolled up,—they had been stretched on the ground until the sun dried them,—but Jack quickly unrolled them, and the miners looked on as if greatly surprised. They could not understand how one ball, fired in the dark, had finished the lion so speedily.
"It is a wonder she did not tear you all to pieces," said Pete. "You must have made a dead-centre shot."
The other skin was unrolled, too, and by the time the miners had examined it to their satisfaction Julian came up with the bag. Mr. Banta untied it, and one look was enough.
"That is gold," said he; "there is no iron pyrites about that. Now, Jack, you go on and get dinner for us, and we will listen while Julian tell us about those ghosts."
"I told you I did not believe in such things," remarked Julian. "And the whole thing has come out just as I said it would."
"What have you in this pack?" asked Jack. "It looks like provisions."
"That is just what it is. We thought you must be nearly out by this time, and so we brought some along. Let the mule go home, if she wants to; she misses that old bell-mare."
The story which Jack did not tell lost nothing in going through Julian's hands. He described things as nearly as he could see them before Jack's light went out, and told of the lucky shot and the savage shrieks that came up to him through the pit.
"Those shrieks were what got next to me," declared Julian, with a shudder. "I can't get them out of my mind yet. I thought that the ghost had Jack, sure."