“I’m hoping for the best,” returned the scout. “If that has happened, Dell, it is up to you and me to give as good an account of ourselves at Pima, as the rest of our pards have done, or will do, at the bluff.”
Half an hour’s riding in a westerly direction proved the truth of the scout’s theory regarding the location of Chavorta Gorge. From a hilltop a look toward the ridge showed them a rent in its buttressed side.
“There’s the gorge!” exclaimed Dell.
“Good!” cried the scout. “Now to get into it, and make the best time possible to Pima.”
The sun was mounting as they entered the gorge, but the gash was so deep and narrow that even at midday a spectral twilight reigned in its depths.
It was a bleak and dismal defile, walled in by gray masses of granite, and with hardly any silt in its bed. The river that had once flowed through the gorge had long since found other channels, and what gold the place yielded had to be dug from the rock crevices with iron hooks and rods.
The scout had heard all about Chavorta Gorge, although this was the first time he had ever inspected it, and as he and Dell clattered along through the gloom, he explained the method of mining in vogue in the place.
“The outcasts of respectable mining-camps flock to the gorge,” the scout added, “and prod and gouge at these granite walls for the nuggets once brought down the defile by the vanished stream. The place has a hard name, and rightly so, for an outcast miner is about as hard a citizen as one can find anywhere in the West.”
“Are there many people at Pima?” asked the girl.
“I suppose the camp is about the size of Sun Dance, although my information is rather limited on that point.”