"And the vast beaver colony that I'm going to find some day?"
"It can wait. It will be there after we get out the gold."
"And you are in full agreement with this, James Boyd?"
"I am."
"And you are in full agreement with this, too, Thomas Bent?"
"I am."
"Then I accept. A quarter of a million dollars is a great sum. I scarcely thought there was so much money in the world, but one may do much with it. I am already forming certain plans in my mind. Will you let me take another and thorough look at your map, William?"
He studied it long and attentively, and then as he handed it back to the owner, he said:
"It will be a long journey, as you have said, full of dangers, but I think I am not boasting when I say we be four who know how to meet hardship and peril. I make the prediction that after unparalleled dangers we will find the mine. Yet a quarter of a million is too vast a sum for my services. I could not accept such an amount. Make it about ten thousand dollars."
Will laughed.