“She’s a-watching all the money that’s buried in that there mountain, of course,” was the pitying reply. “Once on a time some Spaniards were going along there with a lot of money packed on mules, when the Indians came along, and they had a big fight, and they wus all killed, but first they had buried their money, and nobody hain’t ever been able to find it, ’cause they is always a spirit guarding it. Grandma Christmas, she can tell yer all about it; she’s ’most a hundred years old, and she’s lived up there ’most since the time of the fight.
“Paw and me, we found some arrerheads up there, and Paw, he’s seen the spirit with the light and ever’thing.”
“Has your father ever dug for the money?” I asked.
“No, he ain’t never dug on that mountain, but he’s dug in another place, I ain’t saying where, but not more’n a hundred miles from there,” he answered mysteriously.
“My uncle, he first seen a light in this here place where Paw dug—a funny sort of light that didn’ burn anything up—”
“Like Moses and the burning bush,” I suggested, but he ignored my interruption, and went on.
“—and he first shot through it with his pistol, and then he tried to touch it with his hand, but he never could get near enough to it. It always moved away as he went toward it.
“But anyway him and Paw found the right place to dig. They knowed it was the right place, ’cause they found two machete knives stuck way down in the ground. They found a funny sort [[59]]of place, like a well all walled up with rocks that had been filled in with dirt, and had grass and everything all grown over it.
“Paw and my uncle taken time about digging and watching, and once when Paw was digging, he come to the bottom of the well. The bottom was covered with pieces of flat rock like pieces of pie with their points together in the middle. Paw started to prize one of these pieces up, when a bright light flashed right in his face, and he heard a terrible noise like a hundred men a-running on horses, and fighting, too. He got out of there quick as he could, but it took him a long time to catch up with my uncle, who had heard the noise first.
“No, he never did go back there, but he told another man, who did go, and found the place too, but the man what owned the place run him away.