She looked at him, trembling.
“He—he is not dead?”
“Yes, Lena,” said the kind-hearted scout, his own voice shaking. “I am sorry to have to tell you that he died two days ago. You know he was not well when he last saw your father. I’ve been doing some scouting work in the mountains. Thinking to visit him, I called at the cabin, and found him seriously ill with fever, in fact, at the point of death. I did all I could for him, but it was little enough, and he died. He gave me this package to give to you, or send to you; for he thought you had started for the East long ago. He thought you would persuade your father to give up his mine and go home—he had never heard of John Forest’s death.”
He put the buckskin bag in her trembling hands.
When she opened it she found it filled with what seemed to be bits of broken green glass.
“Emeralds, and as fine as you’ll ever see,” he explained. “There’s a fortune there, and he wanted me to see that they went to you. It’s a queer place here to deliver them, and a strange——”
He stopped, for she was not looking at the emeralds; thinking of her father, she had begun to weep.
“There was no letter from my uncle?” she said after a while.
“No; he was too weak to write. He sent his love and the emeralds. He was looking for gold, you know. Well, his pick broke through into a cave, and opened up a queer place that must once have been an Indian temple, or medicine lodge. The emeralds had been round the neck of a stone idol. The buckskin string that had held them was decayed, so that they had fallen to the floor, and were covered with dust. He found one, and then, by a search, got all of them.
“His first thought was that perhaps there were many more, and he made a thorough search. I’m afraid that in that search he got the fever that killed him. The place was horridly damp, as I afterward found; for, after his death, I myself made a thorough exploration of the cave, and discovered that fact, though nothing else. The only gems were round the neck of the idol, I am sure.”