Every such range has its secrets, and one by one they are found out from time to time; but there seemed to be little use in the discovery of any just then and there. It was a very useless sort of secret. What was it?
Well, it was one that had been kept by that deep chasm for nobody could guess how many thousands of years, until Steve Harrison stumbled a little as he climbed one of the broken "stairs" of quartz, and came down upon his hands and knees.
Before him the cañon widened into a sort of table-land, with crags and peaks around it, and Murray saw trees here and there, and a good many other things, but Steve exclaimed,
"Murray! Murray! Gold!"
"What! A vein?"
"I fell right down upon it. Just look there."
Murray looked, half carelessly at first, like a man who had before that day discovered plenty of such things; but then he sprang forward.
"We're in the gold country," he said. "It's all gold-bearing quartz hereaway. Steve! Steve! I declare I never saw such a vein as that. The metal stands out in nuggets."
So it did. A strip of rock nearly five feet wide was dotted and spangled with bits of dull yellow. It seemed to run right across the cañon at the edge of that level, and disappear in the solid cliffs on either side.
"Oh, what a vein!"