“Anything wrong?” Weber asked.
“Engine’s heating up,” Jimmy explained. “We’ll have to wait here a while until it cools off.”
“Then can we go on?” Weber inquired. “We’ll make it, won’t we?”
“I think so,” Jimmy assured him. “Unless we crack some of the bearings we’ll be all right as soon as this cools off a little.”
“You know, a gold strike’s a funny business,” Weber mused. “You can’t put your fingers on gold. Just when you think you’re all ready to make a stake, something comes up. It’s always been like that.”
“We’ll make it or bust.” Jimmy promised.
“I wasn’t thinkin’ so much of that,” Weber declared, “I know you’re doin’ your best, son, but you ask any old prospector. Gold’s a funny old gal. She’ll flirt with you for years and then go throw herself on some total stranger’s neck, right in his lap, as it were.”
A pilot friend of Jimmy’s sauntered over and inquired their trouble.
“You headed for Keno, too?” he asked, looking in the passenger cockpit and seeing the blanket rolls and grub sack. “Three planes have left here already for that destination. They say they’ve made a big gold strike up there.”