"Anything wrong, young man? We saw your fire?"
"No--not now." Boland"s thoughts were confused and his head sang. He attributed these things to sleepiness; in fact, he was sickening to a fever.
"You look mighty peaked," said the spokesman. "Got water? Anything we can do for you?"
"Nothing the matter with me, except that I"m pretty well played out. And I"ve been anxious. There was a boy lost, or hurt--I don"t know which. But it"s all right now. They lit two fires. That was to be the signal if there was nothing seriously wrong. I let the boy"s father take my horse--man by the name of Carr."
"And the others? That was Pete Johnson, wasn"t it? He went after the boy?"
"Yes. And young Mitch.e.l.l and Joe Benavides."
Zurich glanced aside at his companions. Dorsey"s back was turned. Jim Scarboro was swearing helplessly under his breath. Tall Eric had taken off his hat and fumbled with it; the low sun was ruddy in his bright hair. Perhaps it was that same sun which flamed so swiftly in Zurich"s face.
"We might as well go back," he said dully, and turned his horse"s head toward the little huddle of hills in the southwest.
Boland watched them go with a confused mind, and sank back to sleep again.
"Jackson," said Pete in the morning, "you and Frank stay here. I reckon there"ll be no use to take the wagon down to the old claim; but us three are going down to take a look, now we"ve come this far. Frank says he"s feeling better, but he don"t look very peart. You get him to sleep all you can. If we should happen to want you, we"ll light a big fire. So long!"
"Don Hooaleece," said Benavides, very bright-eyed, when they had ridden a little way from camp, "how is eet to be? Eef eet is war I am wis you to ze beeg black box."
"Joe," said Pete, "I"ve dodged and crept and slid and crawled and climbed. I"ve tried to go over, under, and around. Now I"m going through."
They came to the copper hill before eight. They found no one; but there were little stone monuments scattered on all the surrounding hills, and a big monument on the highest point of the little hill they had called their own.
"They"ve gone," said Stan. "Very wise of them. Well, let"s go see the worst."
They dismounted and walked to the hilltop. The big monument, built of loose stones and freshly dug slabs of ore, flashed green and blue in the sun. Stan found a folded paper between two flat stones.
"Here"s their location notice," he said.
He started to unfold it; a word caught his eye and his jaw dropped. He held the notice over, half opened, so that Pete and Joe could see the last paragraph:
And the same shall be known as the Bobby Carr Mine.
WITNESSES Jim Scarboro William Dorsey Eric Anderson C. Mayer Zurich
LOCATORS Peter Wallace Johnson Stanley Mitch.e.l.l
"Zere is a note," said Joe; "I see eet wizzinside."
Stanley unfolded the location notice. A note dropped out. Pete picked it up and read it aloud:
Pete: We did not know about the boy, or we would have helped, of course.
Only for him you had us beat. So this squares that up.
Your location does not take in quite all the hill. So we located the little end piece for ourselves. We think that is about right.
Yours truly C. Mayer Zurich