"But, Pete, aren't we taking a big chance that some one will find our
claim? It isn't recorded, and our notice will run out unless we do some
assessment work pretty quick. Suppose some one should stumble onto it?"

"Well, we've got to take the chance," said Pete. "And the chance of some
one stumbling on our find by blind luck, like we did, isn't a drop in the
bucket to the chance that we'll be followed if we try to slip away while
these fellows are worked up with the fever. Seventy-five thousand round
dollars to one canceled stamp that some one has his eye glued on us
through a telescope right this very now! I wouldn't bet the postage stamp
on it, at that odds. No, sir! Right now things shape up hotter than the
seven low places in hell.

"If we go to the mine now--or soon--we'll never get back. After we show
them the place--_adios el mundo_!"

"Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird," Mitchell
quoted soberly. "So you think that after a while, when their enthusiasm
dies down, we can give them the slip?"

"Sure! It's our only chance."

"Couldn't we make a get-away at night?"

"It is what they are hoping for. They'd follow our tracks. No, sir! We do
nothing. We notice nothing, we suspect nothing, and we have nothing to
hide."

"You want to remember that our location notice will be running out pretty
soon."

"We'll have to risk it. Not so much of a risk, either. Cobre is the last
outpost of civilization. South of here, in the whole strip from Comobabi
to the Colorado River, there's not twenty men, all told, between here and
the Mexican border--except yonder deluded wretches in the Gavilan; and
none beyond the border for a hundred miles."

"It is certainly one big lonesome needle-in-the-haystack proposition--and
no one has any idea where our find is, not within three days' ride. But
what puzzles me is this: If Zurich really got wise to our copper, he'd
know at once that it was a big thing, if there was any amount of it. Then
why didn't he keep it private and confidential? Why tip it off to the
G.P.? I have always understood that in robbery and murder, one is
assisted only by intimate friends. What is the large idea?"

"That, I take it," laughed Pete, "is, in some part, an acknowledgment
that it doesn't take many like you and me to make a dozen. You've made
one or two breaks and got away with 'em, the last year or two, that has
got 'em guessing; and I'm well and loudly known myself. There is a wi