"Well the kids' party ain't after our game, that's a comfort," said one, lighting his pipe.
"Why not turn the kids loose, an' so we'll get rid o' the whole mob o' them?"
"Why not? you says; an' you claim to have brains in that thing on your shoulders! Now didn't our man with the money say as how his success depended on keepin' the kids' party here a week, an' ain't our ten thousand dependin' on his success?"
"Well, he'll never come back with no ten thousand, success or no success."
"Maybe no, but I'm willin' to take a chance on it, since the chance is so cheap."
They soon fell into discussion of other topics.
"Granddaddy Par always said it was buried in three places. Now because some others have been before us in this cave, it's no sign they have been before us in the other places. If I hadn't been such a little kid when he showed me that map, and said as how he'd take me with him some day an' go after the stuff—it was always 'some day,' and the rheumatiz never left him till he died. As I was sayin', if I hadn't been such a little kid, I'd made a copy o' the map."
"It's queer you can't remember nothin' on the map."
"I see it in my dreams, times; but when I wakes it's all gone. But I think we're on the right track. That old harpoon grown tight in that crotch o' the tree, pointin' over to the two trees, blazed, wasn't for nothin'."
"How do ye know them's blazes on the trees?"