Jack and Pete looked at the eccentric prospector as if they thought he had gone crazy in good earnest.
"Oh, I'm not locoed. Has your father got talk bo' at the ranch, boy?"
"Yes," rejoined Jack.
"Then it's easy."
The prospector spoke with such easy confidence that, in spite of themselves, Jack and Pete began to pay serious attention to his words.
"Oh, yes; I suppose we jes' climb a sugar-pine and asked Central ter give us Grizzly one twenty-three?" inquired Pete, sardonically.
"Nope," rejoined the miner, quite unruffled; "but hain't yer never thought that there's a telephone at the big water dam?"
"Thunders of Vesuvius, that's right!" exclaimed Pete, leaping to his feet and executing a jig.
"How do we get there, though?" asked Jack. "We must be miles from it."