"Ten thousand plunks."
I began to laugh. He laughed, too: "You'll pay 'em if you take my map an' go to the Coquina hills," he said.
I stopped laughing: "Do you mean that I am to go there and investigate before I pay you for this information?"
"Sure. If the goods ain't up to sample the deal is off."
"Sample? What sample?" I demanded derisively.
He made a gesture with one soiled hand as though quieting a balky horse.
"I took a snapshot, friend. You wanta take a slant at it?"
"You took a photograph of one of these alleged cave-dwellers?"
"I took ten but when these here cave-ladies hove rocks at me the fillums was put on the blink—all excep' this one which I dee-veloped an' printed."
He drew from his inner coat pocket a photograph and handed it to me—the most amazing photograph I ever gazed upon. Astounded, almost convinced I sat looking at this irrefutable evidence in silence. The smoke of his cigar drifting into my face aroused me from a sort of dazed inertia.