“Is it not lovely?” he murmured. “Alas, that such a place of perfect peace and beauty should come to be deserted and despoiled!”
Roderick was fingering the slugs of gold in his pocket. He followed the direction of the Major’s eyes.
“Yes, it is all very beautiful,” he replied. “But scenery is scenery, Major, and gold is gold.”
The little torch flashed like an evening star as they disappeared into the grotto.
Buell Hampton and Roderick had gazed up the canyon.
But they had failed to observe two human forms crouched among the brushwood not fifty yards away—the forms of Bud Bledsoe and Grady, who had that morning tracked the Major from his home to the falls, under the cataract, through the rock gallery, right into the hidden canyon, intent on discovering the secret whence the carload of rich ore had come, bent on revenge for Grady’s undoing with the smelting company when the proper moment should arrive.
That night Buell Hampton, Roderick Warfield, and Grant Jones supped frugally at the hunter’s hut on ham sandwiches and coffee. Down in Hidden Valley on the gold-strewn sandbar W. B. Grady and his henchman feasted royally on venison steaks cut from the fat buck Roderick’s gun had provided. They had already torn down the location notices and substituted their own. And far into the night by the light of their camp fire the claim-jumpers searched for the nuggets among the pebbles and gathered them into a little heap, stopping only from their frenzied quest to take an occasional gulp of whiskey from the big flask without which Bud Bledsoe never stirred. When daylight broke, exhausted, half-drunk, both were fast asleep beside the pile of stolen gold.