“The next day we made three trips to that cave. Each time we brought back all the green gold we could carry. That cave must have been a goldsmith shop of some ancient tribe. Every nook and cranny was crowded with green gold.
“‘All we have to do now,’ I said, ‘is to take this out to civilization. We are rich.’
“‘Civilization?’ Timmie said, his eyes dreamy with thoughts of wide open spaces, ‘Who wants to go back to that?’ You see he was a born recluse. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘there’s the gold mine. We must find that.’
“Well, up to that time I hadn’t once thought of the mine from which this gold had been taken. But from that moment the finding of that mine became an obsession with both of us.
“We thought of nothing else until an unusually heavy snowfall drove all game away and left us facing starvation.
“I wanted him to come away then.” Once more Gordon Duncan’s tone was mellow with memories. “He wouldn’t come; but told me to go, to return with fairer weather, and carry away my share of the treasure.
“It was a hard trek back. I was lost many times. Then I went snow blind. Before my sight was gone I drove my knife in the tree, as you saw it back there.
“‘I’ll find that and be able to make my way back,’ I told myself.
“But I never did, until just the other day. I reached the shelter of civilization more dead than alive. My sight was a year coming back. Then all memory of trails was gone.
“Not until I saw that knife in the tree did it all come back to me. And now,” he said sadly, “he is gone!”