“As I was about to say,” Dan Baker made a fresh start, “I was no longer an actor. No one wished me to act. So, securing pick, a pan and a burro—or was it two burros?”
“Oh!” murmured Petite Jeanne. “Just as you were to do in our play.”
“Just as he is to do,” Angelo corrected stoutly.
“Yes, yes,” Dan Baker broke in, like a child whose story has been interrupted. “But the burros. There were two, I am sure. Well, I recall the jingle of picks and shovels, pots and pans as we traveled up Bear Creek Canyon in Colorado—beautiful, wonderful Colorado, where the snow-capped mountains are reflected in tiny lakes whose waters are blue-black.
“Three days we traveled. Three nights I slept by a burned out camp fire on the banks of a madly rushing stream.
“From time to time I caught the gleam of a golden speck in the sand at the river’s bottom.
“But the gold,” I told myself, “is higher up. And so it was.”
He paused to poke at the fire. As his eyes reflected the gleam of the fire the little French girl knew that he was not in the heart of a great, sordid and selfish city, but far, far away, prodding a camp fire in beautiful Colorado where snow-capped mountains are reflected in tiny lakes whose waters are a deep blue-black. And she was glad.
“Gold,” he began once more. “Ah, yes. There was gold. You would be surprised.
“I built a cabin, all of logs save the floor. That was of fragrant fir and spruce boughs.