“When Sandez left my cabin to go on his way south, the weather having cleared, I decided to take up his back trail in hope of finding some trace of his partner, and thus getting a possible clue to the location of the mine. So I started out one clear, cold day, with my dog for guide and company.
“I knew the general direction that the two partners traveled, for their trail was not lost until they had gone some twenty miles northwest of my cabin. I made fast time over the frozen snow on my skis, until by noon I had covered nigh onto fifteen miles. The dog was trotting along ahead of me when suddenly he disappeared into a deep gulch.
“In a second or two he set up a howl long-drawn-out and I knew then that he had found the quarry. I discovered the body of the man under some thick bushes at the bottom of the gulch. He had not been frozen to death either, for there was a slit in his back, where the knife had been driven.
“No wonder that I had found it hard to ask the Señor Sandez what had become of his partner. Here was the answer. It was evident that this deed of treachery had been the end of a bitter quarrel, perhaps over the division of the wealth or some other matter of dispute. I always felt that there was more back of it than appeared on the surface. I found nothing to establish the identity of the dead man, neither his name nor his place of residence.
“I did find, however, in an inner pocket the picture of a rather pretty Spanish woman, and on the back of it was drawn a diagram showing a certain part of the mountain. I instantly jumped to the conclusion that it was the clue to the Lost Mine. I spent several months thereafter trying to locate the place. I got most of the way by the map and then I came to a mark that fooled me completely, and I lost the trail.”
“What did you do with that diagram, Jeems?” asked Jim intently.
“I kept it back of a rock in the chimney of my cabin, and it’s there yet for all I know.”
“Unless the mountain rats have chewed it up,” remarked Tom gloomily.