“I’ll tell a maverick!” Another period of silence. “But he can spare us now. And we may find gold.”
“Not only may, but will. Nothing like confidence. If we caught those scoundrels who robbed Decker, I wonder if we could get his nuggets back for him? He needs ’em. What a rotten break he got!”
“I’ll say! After working all that time, too! It would be different if he came like most of these others, and was lucky enough to strike it the first day or so. ‘Easy come, easy go.’ But his gold didn’t come easy. He worked for it.”
“And how! He deserved to find a fortune. And then to be robbed of it! Sure is tough luck.”
Roy pulled his blanket a bit closer about him. The night was chilly, with a hint of fall. Gradually, the eyes of Teddy and Roy closed, their breathing became regular. Jerry Decker, the two horsemen out of the storm, the thought of to-morrow with gold waiting for them, the encounter with Maryland—all these began to whirl around in their heads, each thought overlapping the other, none assuming any importance, and, finally, nothing. They slept.
CHAPTER XVIII
Discovery
The clatter of a frying pan against the cook stove; the swish of canvas on canvas as tent flaps were rolled back; the bubbling of coffee; the good-natured cries of men keen for the coming day’s labor—this was morning at Nugget Camp.
As Teddy and Roy tumbled from their blankets, the crisp air quickened their motions, and within five minutes of getting up they were splashing water over their faces and necks—cold, breath-taking water, from tin basins. Then a satisfying breakfast of bacon, flapjacks, coffee, eggs and corn bread. The corn bread they got from Gus Tripp, and cooked the rest themselves.
There is a feeling of great, unreasonable joy that comes to those who, in a high altitude, arise early in the brisk weather of late August, to watch the sun toss its beams over the tops of the mountains and breathe in deeply of the tingling air. The world is changed. Sights and sounds assume a new significance, a deeper meaning. A man will clap his partner heavily on the back or yell suddenly in his ear or shoulder him off the trail—all for no reason at all.
And breakfast, eaten beneath the light blue of the early morning sky—breakfast, with fragrant, crisp bacon, the smell of wood burning in the stove or fireplace, the aroma of coffee—