“Bait for a madman’s trap!” he said aloud, huskily. “To catch the Golden Emperor of Space!”
He went down on his knees, the gold caught up into his hands, his eyes bright with the old, forgotten, but never dying, fever. He ran back to the cave’s opening, carrying his hands full, staring at the yellow crumbling particles, light-stricken. He had never seen such gold; he had never believed gold existed like this.
He whirled and hastened back into the cavern, going to the bag which still lay on the floor. The pick, still in its place, caught his eye. He jerked it out, breaking away a dozen handfuls of the hard clay. He struck the clay with his boot-heel, breaking it apart. And from the fragments which he carried to the light there shone up at him the dull yellow of gold.
The old, old fever rode him hard, having taken him thus unaware, leaping out upon him from the dark of the unexpected. His hands shook with it. He had found gold before; he had known the wild fires it sets in a man’s brain. But never had he found gold like this, never had he known so seething a tumult.
“All men look for the mother lode!” he whispered. “Why shouldn’t it be waiting somewhere for the man who can find it? Why shouldn’t this be it?”
He had forgotten Paula. A man forgets everything when he finds gold, much gold, pure, yellow virgin gold. Often enough he ceases for the moment to be a man, and is like a wild beast hungering, tearing at bloody meat.
He went here and there eager and breathless, driving the pick into the time-hardened clay, taking with shaking hands the earth he dug out, muttering to himself as he found again and again that there was in it the glint and gleam of gold.
“There is nowhere in the world a man so rich as I!” he whispered. And then he thought of Paula.
He went out upon the ledge outside, and sat down in the sunshine and lighted his pipe. This gold was not John Sheldon’s unless John Sheldon were utterly contemptible. It was Paula’s. Her birthright. Was he the man to rob a woman? The man to cheat a girl? A girl like Paula? He shook his head.
“I was drunk on the cursed stuff!” he said half-angrily.