“Night had fallen. They wrapped themselves in their blankets and lay down.
“Next morning, while having breakfast, Stud said: ‘This bone we found last night sets me thinking. In fact, I’ve thought it over all night long, how that skeleton came to be here.’
“‘Easy,’ Bill answered; ‘somebody kicked off here or was slain or died of hunger or thirst.’
“‘You may be right,’ Stud admitted; ‘many have roamed around here. But for the love of an old penny I can’t quite figure why they should have been killed or died right here. There must be a reason, or let’s say a certain justification. There has come into my mind the idea that, since none of the Spaniards was ever found, dead or alive, it is possible that the whole mine with all the men was covered inside of a few minutes by a sandstorm or by a mountain slide or by an earthquake. Our map is all right, so I figure the landscape has been changed by some natural disaster. Mountains may have disappeared entirely or broken in two or flattened out.’
“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.
5
“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.
