"Better," replied Dick, with his mouth full of bacon. "A great deal better. I felt pretty confident last night that I was on the way to earn that half-interest in the Hermanos Grant, and this morning, since talking with Pedro, I feel more confident still."
"Is that so?" cried Arthur. "I hope you're right. What is it you think you have discovered?"
"In the first place," replied Dick, "I have discovered that we are a lot of wiseacres: we have been going around with our eyes shut."
"How?" we both asked.
"If we hadn't had our heads so full of the old copper mine, and if we hadn't been so bent on finding the trail to it, we should never have made the mistake we did."
"What mistake?" I asked. "Hurry up, Dick! Don't take so long about it. What are you driving at?"
"Why, this!" replied my partner, suddenly sitting up straight and wagging his finger at us. "This trail we have been following, all the way from Hermanos up to the edge of the cañon, was not a trail at all—it was a ditch!"
"A ditch!" we both exclaimed.
"Yes, a ditch. A ditch dug by those old Pueblo Indians to carry water down to that wide, level stretch of ground at the back of the Casa. I'm sure of it. If you give up the idea of a trail and consider it as a ditch, all its peculiarities will be explained at once. It will account for its uniform grade, for its unexpected distinctness, and more than everything else, it will account for the fact that the 'trail' never once dipped down a hill or climbed one either, but always—invariably—went round the head of every gully, deep or shallow, that came in its way."