“Brawny broke in: ‘Quite so. I know something of geology. Things like this happen more frequently than most people are willing to believe.’
“‘All right,’ Stud continued, ‘this establishes the fact that the Spaniards who were near the mine could not have evaporated by some miracle. Their bones must still be near where the mine used to be. Of course a single bone might be carried off by a vulture or an animal, but let’s see if we can find the rest of the skeleton. If we find it, then we can look for another near by. If we find two, we can assume there are more, so if we follow the skeletons we may come to the mine, or at least to the spot where it was. My idea may prove wrong but I think it’s worth trying.’
“Stud was right. The whole skeleton to which the bone belonged was dug out, and, digging in a circle, soon they came upon another. Digging in the direction from the first find to the second they found more and more, and then they came upon all sorts of tools. A few yards farther on they found broken ore so rich with gold that the rock was more metal than stone.
“‘Well,’ Stud said, ‘I reckon we have made the hit. ‘What now?’
“‘Let’s call the whole gang together,’ advised Bill.
“Brawny looked at him: ‘I knew it, I knew all the time that you are just another jackass. But I would never have believed that you could be so big a damned jackass. What do you think the others would do if they had found the mine? You don’t think them such fools that they would come along and invite you to the big party? I know them a lot better. They would cheat you out of it. Why, we had the idea, we had the brains, so it’s only just for us to cash in. Besides, didn’t this dead Spaniard just invite us to come and lift the cash? It was us he lent his arm and beckoned to. If he had wanted them to have it he would have acted otherwise. So let’s shut up. We return to town with the others, and two months later we come out here and collect. Right?’
“So it was agreed.
“They picked up all the rich rocks which were laid bare and put them into their bags with the idea of selling them to buy tools and provisions for the next expedition.
“Carefully they covered all the diggings, to make rediscovery by any outsider impossible.
“Before they had finished doing this, one of the other groups unexpectedly showed up. They looked suspiciously around and one of them said: ‘Hi, you guys, what’s the game? Holding out on us? Is that it? Come, come, cards on the table.’
“Those accused denied having doublecrossed anybody and said they had found nothing of importance.
“As though their quarrel had carried through the air, a third group came up, arriving at the scene at the precise moment that the first two groups were ready to go into partnership. Perhaps they would have taken the third group in also had not a fourth group shown up an hour later, and the arrival of this group caused the second and the third groups to forget everything about a possible agreement with the first, and the second group was now the hardest of all, accusing the first of foul play. One man was sent away to call the fifth so as to have the whole expedition together to court-martial the treacherous first group.
“The court was not long in session before sentence was passed. It agreed upon hanging Stud, Bill, and Brawny by the neck on the nearest tree. The verdict was unanimous for the simple reason that by hanging the three accused the cuts for these three former partners could be divided among the gentlemen of the jury. These gentlemen of the jury, each one of them, given the slightest chance, would have done precisely what the accused had tried to do.
“The mine was fully discovered and worked with all the zeal avaricious human beings could command. The gain was almost unbelievably rich and the prospectors felt sure that they had not yet come to the most valuable veins.
“But provisions ran short and new tools were needed, so five men were sent off to town to sell a quantity of nuggets and with the proceeds buy all that was needed to go on with the exploitation.
“Harry Tilton, the one who later told the story, was satisfied with what he had earned up to this time. He decided to leave With the five men and not to return. He received his proper cut and left. A bank in Arizona paid him for his load twenty—eight thousand dollars. He had promised his partners not to tell about the mine. This promise he kept. With the money he went back to his native state, Kansas, where he bought a farm and led an easy life.
“The five men ordered to get provisions bought horses, tools, clothing, and sufficient food to last for a long time. After they had their claims properly registered, they returned to the mine.
“Arriving there, they found the camp destroyed and burned down. Their partners, six in number, were dead, killed by Indians, as could be seen from the manner in which they had been slain.
“The gold and everything else was untouched.
“From the way the camp looked they knew that a fierce battle had taken place before their partners had been defeated.
“Nothing else was to be done but to bury the men and then go to work once more.
“Hardly a week had gone by when the Indians returned. They came about eighty men strong. Without any palavers or warning they attacked so quickly that the miners were killed before they had time enough to draw a gun or fetch a rifle. The massacre over, the Indians left without taking even a nail.
“One of the prospectors, who was gravely wounded and left for dead, managed to crawl away after the Indians had gone. How long he dragged himself across the desert, whether days or weeks, he could not remember when he was picked up by a farmer out hunting. The farmer was living all by himself in a lonely shack some thirty miles from the nearest town. The wounded man told his story. The farmer could not carry the man to town because he could see that his wounds were such that he would not live. A few days later the man died.
“The farmer reported the case when he was in town about five months later. Nobody, not even the sheriff, took his tale seriously. People there considered the story evidence that the farmer’s mind was unbalanced—as they had suspected since the day the stranger had settled so far out in the desert.
“Harry Tilton of course did not know anything of what had happened after he had left. He thought his partners had returned to their homes after having made their fortunes. He wasn’t much of a talker anyhow. He admitted that he had made his pile in prospecting, and let it rest there.
“Then came the gold fever all over the world. In three different corners of the earth, Australia, South Africa, and Alaska, deposits were found. People everywhere became mad in their desire for riches. If every tale about gold-finds told in those days had been true, the world today would have more gold at its command than lead. One prospector out of ten thousand would make a hundred thousand dollars inside of six months. In consequence of this plain fact stories were spread and believed that every one of twenty thousand prospectors within four weeks had picked two millions for his own share.
“It was these exaggerated tales that brought to the mind of adventurous men living in the same county where Harry Tilton had his farm bits of the story Harry had told.
“An expedition was formed and Harry, much against his will, was made leader. He did not care to go out again, for he was satisfied with his life. But these men tired him out, pressed him day in and day out, called him a bad citizen, a liar, an egoistical and jealous neighbor, threatened to run him out of the county, until he saw no other way but to take the party to the old mine.