Lacaud, out during these days looking over the surroundings, came back to the camp only at night. He did not ask where the partners were working nor where the mine was. He was not interested in knowing the location. It was his idea that wherever their mine was, it must be the wrong place and not worth exploring. Because the partners had not found the lode after so many months of hard work he would not touch the mine even should he come upon it. If those fellows had not found the real mother vein near their mine, he would not try there, for to him it was proof that this was not the place he was after. He would not lose his time and labor investigating even the surroundings of their mine.
“Did you find your lode today?” Dobbs asked when he came to the camp.
“Not yet,” Lacaud answered. “Somehow I have the feeling that I have never been so close to it as I was this afternoon.”
“You have my blessing and don’t you get tired out before you find the right spot.”
“Don’t you worry, I won’t.” Lacaud’s confidence could not be shaken so easily.
“You’re invited to dinner, Laky,” Howard said in a very friendly tone. “Leave your cooking alone. You’ll need your grub.”
“Thanks, partner.”
4
That night the three partners felt like factory workers on Saturday evening. Tomorrow they would plant more shrubs and saplings on the mining field and destroy the narrow path leading to the mine so that the shrubs might have time to root and grow and make the plateau appear as untouched a wilderness as it was when it was discovered.
This work would take the whole day, but it would be a joyful day like a Sunday spent working in your own garden. Then they would rest comfortably and the day after they would prepare the packs and get the whole pack-train ready so that they might leave two days later.
It was a jolly evening they spent, and for the first time they felt growing among them a bond which came very close to real friendship. So far they had never been friends or comrades, only business partners without any common interest other than their work.
During these long months they had had no papers or books to enrich their thinking or their vocabulary. Always overtired, they had shortened their speech to such a point that Lacaud sometimes failed to understand what the three partners were talking about. Pick-axes, spades, water, dirt, rocks, burros, food, gold, clothing, the parts of their primitive machinery, and all details of their work were referred to by signals, often merely single letters, which only they themselves understood. They could talk to each other for half an hour without an outsider knowing what they said. They themselves did not realize that their speech had changed to such primitiveness, for only by living in larger groups can man compare his speech with that used by others. Only when Lacaud did not grasp their talk in full and had to ask over and over again did they realize that they had acquired a lingo of their own which was incomprehensible to outsiders.
5
The mine was leveled to the satisfaction of Howard. Anybody now coming upon the mine by chance would never think that a mine had been worked here, or if at all, not during the last hundred years.
“Doesn’t it give you guys a real joy to look at the place now?” Howard asked with pride in his voice.
“All right,” Dobbs said, “you have it your way and you feel happy, so please, for the love of Mike’s booze, leave us in peace with your feelings. Sometimes I think you must have been a preacher, only the hell of it is I can’t figure what church it was you wanted to catch birds for.”
That night Howard said: “Something very important is really worrying me. I’ve been thinking things over, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it won’t be so damn easy to get our goods safely to town.”
“Just what do you mean?” Curtin asked.
“The trip has its damn hazards.”
“Oh, we know that. Tell us a better one.” Dobbs was impatient at hearing what he thought was an old story.
“Don’t you get nervous, Dobby. This trip will be different from the one that brought us here. Likely it will be the most difficult one you ever made in all your life. There may be bandits. There may be accidents. All sorts, of accidents can happen on these dreadful trails across the Sierra. The police might pass our way and be a little bit too curious about what we’re carrying in our packs. We’ve worked hard here, if any devils ever worked hard. But I tell you guys, as long as we haven’t got the whole cinnamon safely stowed away inside the strong boxes of a good bank, it isn’t ours. I just wanted to mention this to make you understand you are not rich yet.”
Lacaud came to the fire. For a long while he sat staring into the fire without saying a word. Then, as if coming out of a long dream, he said: “And I’m sure it must be around here somewhere.”
“Sure,” Howard said smiling. “But leave your worries for another day. Help yourself to a good dinner. It’s all waiting for you.” Then to Dobbs: “Hey, cook, what about the coffee?”
