So simply were they plighted to one another; so easily does a great danger sweep away all disguises.
When the riderless bay had come into camp, Sherwood (half mad with an awful fear) had hurried away to the hills, lashing his span without mercy over the storm-washed road—or out through the open country where the road was gullied out. When in the up-piled drift where the flood had left it—he found the gray campaign hat he knew so well, a sickening fear fell upon him as though he had already looked upon the face of the dead. At length he thought of the tunnel, after fruitless search elsewhere; and there—in the dug-out that had been palmed off on him as a joke on his credulity, he found his heart’s desire. After all, Spencer’s old store-room—his cellar-above-ground—was worth a king’s ransom—when valued by this man and this maid.
The waters had gone down, but left the tunnel entrance flooded; for the fallen walls of the old adobe created a small dam which the flood overflowed. To get past this—without wading knee-deep in the mud—was a problem. The whirling waters had eaten away the earth which formed the front part of the tunnel—wider now by two feet—and in the place where the earth had melted away stood a small box. Sherwood put his foot against it, to pry it out of the mud.
“I’ll get this out for you to stand on, dear; then you can jump across I think, with my help.”
But, deep settled into the mud and debris, it resisted him. He went back in the tunnel and got a pick from among the tools he had used in extending the “cellar” to strike the ledge that wasn’t there; for the “croppings” that had been shown him had been hauled there—salted, to deceive the “tenderfoot.”
The box refused to move, even when Sherwood’s pick—used as a lever—was applied; so, swinging it over his head, he brought the pick down into the box, shattering the lid into pieces. It was more than half filled with small rusty tin cans, bearing soiled and torn labels, on which were the printed words in colors still bright: “Preston & Merrill’s Yeast Powder.” A case of baking powder of a sort popular five-and-thirty years before. Strange!
Sherwood laughed. “We’ve found some of Crazy Dan’s stores!” and attempted to take one of the little cans. It lifted like lead. He stopped—afraid to put it to the test—and looked at Evaleen queerly; and she (remembering the story she had heard of Dan’s persistence in working the cañon for placer gold) gave a little cry as he started to open it. It seemed too much to dare to believe—to hope for—— Yet——.
He lifted the lid. Gold! The gold dust that Crazy Dan (ay! Miser Dan) had, back in the dead years, hoarded away in the safest place he knew; adding to it month after month, as he delved, and died with his secret still his own.