Jo’s duties were very active ones. He had to move the goods, saddles, etc., into camp, and then get the wood for the fire. By this time one of the other boys would be free to help rig up the tent and another would fetch water. It was a lively, interesting scene and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly.
Within an hour the work was all done, and the horses were grazing, with evident enjoyment of the freedom of roaming around over the wide meadow with its growth of luxuriant grass, this after the hard day’s pull. The boys had built a roaring fire of logs fed by long pine cones, for the nights were cold at that altitude.
“This would make a pretty fair sort of a fort,” said Juarez, “if we had to defend it.”
“Not as good as the one Jim and I had when the Apaches attacked us in New Mexico, when we were separated from Tom and the Captain,” remarked Jo wisely.
“That was a natural fort,” put in Jim, “but as Juarez says, we could stand off a crowd here, if we had a chance to fix it up a bit.”
“It’s lucky that it stands clear of the mountain on this side, so that an enemy could not attack us from shelter,” remarked Juarez. “It must be nearly three-quarters of a mile to the foot of the mountain on this side of the valley; perhaps further.”
“This hill must be all of one hundred and fifty feet high,” said Tom. “I should like to see a crowd of Indians charge it.”
“You wouldn’t,” put in Juarez. “They never do a trick like that, but would hang around until we were starved out.”
“I tell you, lads, it won’t be the Indians who will give us trouble,” remarked Jeems Howell, “but a gang of renegade white men and half-breeds. That’s the crowd that will be on our trail.”
“I have a sort of feeling that there is a lion in our path,” quoth James. “We will never get in the vicinity of the ‘Lost Mine’ without a fight. You mark my words. The sooner it comes the better.”