ty reliable, plain,
uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to
perpetrate a swindle."

And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He
dropped the glasses off his nose and glared at me.

"I've often told you you were a fool," he said. "You have let yourself
be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon me."

"How," I asked, "have I imposed upon you?"

"By your ignorance," said he. "Twice I have discovered serious flaws in
your plans that a common-school education should have enabled you to
avoid. And," he continued, "I have been put to expense that I could ill
afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done with it."

I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the
dish-water.

"Goodloe Banks," I said, "I care not one parboiled navy bean for your
education. I always barely tolerated it in any one, and I despised it in
you. What has your learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself and
a bore to your friends. Away," I said--"away with your water-marks and
variations! They are nothing to me. They shall not deflect me from the
quest."

I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped like
a pack-saddle.

"I am going to search that mountain," I went on, "for the treasure.
Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a
water-mark or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer.
Decide."

A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was the
mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it.

"I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No one but a fool would
pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim.
I leave you to your fate."

He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted
his glasses nervously, and flew away in a cloud of dust.

After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass,
I crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the
cedar-brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a pack-saddle.

It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many birds,
so many butter-flies, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and such winged and
stinged beasts of the air and fields.

I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from base to summit.
I found an absolute absence of signs relating to buried treasure. There
was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the
evi