Longstreet came in and dropped the flap behind him. Then he stepped to a shelf and took down a roll of paper which he spread upon the table. Howard looking at it with lack-lustre eyes saw that it was a sort of geological chart of the neighbourhood. Longstreet set his finger upon a point where he had made a cross in red pencil.
'It's there,' he announced triumphantly.
Howard was thinking of the view from the cliff and failed to grasp the other's meaning.
'What's there?' he asked.
'Gold, man!' cried Longstreet. 'Gold! Didn't I say it was as simple as A B C to find gold here? Well, I've done it!'
'Oh, gold.' And even yet Howard's interest was not greatly intrigued.
'I see.'
Longstreet stared at him wonderingly. And then, suddenly, Howard came to earth. Why, the thing, if true, was wonderful, glorious! With all his heart he hoped it was true; for Longstreet's dear old sake, for Helen's. He studied the map.
'That would be right over yonder? About half a mile from here? In Dry
Gulch?'
'Precisely. And it has been there since the time Dry Gulch was not dry but filled with rushing waters. It has been there for any man to find who was not a fool or blind. It rather looks,' and he chuckled, 'as though it had been waiting since the Pliocene age for me.'
'You are sure? You haven't just stumbled upon a little pocket——'