Augustino, the gendarme who rarely spoke when he was sober, but who when drunk preached volubly the wisdom of silence, was in the lead, with bent head nosing the track of the quarry, when his keen eyes lighted on the silver dollar holding down the sheet of paper. The first he appropriated; the second he turned over to the Jefe. Torres looked over his shoulder, and together they read the mystic "50." The Jefe tossed the scrap of paper aside as of little worth, and was for resuming the chase, but Augustino picked up and pondered the "50 "thoughtfully. Even as he pondered it, a shout from Kafael advertised the finding of another dollar. Then Augustino knew. There were fifty of the coins to be had for the picking up. Flinging the note to the wind, he was on hands and knees overhauling the ground. The rest of the party joined in the scramble, while Torres and the Jefe screamed curses on them in a vain effort to make them proceed.
When the gendarmes could find no more, they counted up what they had recovered. The toll came to forty-seven.
"There are three more," cried Eafael, whereupon all flung themselves into the search again. Five minutes more were lost, ere the three other coins were found. Each pocketed what he had retrieved and obediently swung into the pursuit at the heels of Torres and the Jefe.
A mile farther on, Torres tried to trample a shining dollar into the dirt, but Augustino's ferret eyes had been too quick, and his eager fingers dug it out of the soft earth. Where was one dollar, as they had already learned, there were more dollars. The posse came to a halt, and while the two leaders fumed and imprecated, the rest of the members cast about right and left from the trail.
Vicente, a moon — faced gendarme, who looked more like a Mexican Indian than a Maya or a Panamanian "breed," lighted first on the clue. All gathered about, like hounds around a tree into which the 'possum has been run. In truth, it was a tree, or a rotten and hollow stump of one, a dozen feet in height and a third as many feet in diameter. Five feet from the ground was an opening. Above the opening, pinned on by a thorn, was a sheet of paper the same size as the first they had found. On it was written "100."
In the scramble that ensued, half a dozen minutes were lost as half a dozen right arms strove to be first in dipping into the hollow heart of the stump to the treasure. But the hollow extended deeper than their arms were long. "We will chop down the stump," Eafael cried, sounding with the back of his machete against the side of it to locate the base of the hollow. "We will all chop, and we will count what we find inside and divide equally."
By this time their leaders were frantic, and the Jefe had begun threatening, the moment they were back in San Antonio, to send them to San Juan where their carcasses would be picked by the buzzards.
"But we are not back in San Antonio, thank God," said Augustino, breaking his sober seal of silence in order to enunciate wisdom.
"We are poor men, and we will divide in fairness," spoke up Rafael. "Augustino is right, and thank God for it that we are not back in San Antonio. This rich Gringo scatters more money along the way in a day for us to pick up than could we earn in a year where we come from. I, for one, am for revolution, where money is so plentiful."
"With the rich Gringo for a leader," Augustino supplemented. "For as long as he leads this way could I follow forever."