suddenly
failed them, and proved unwholesome. An investigation of the tiny
reservoir disclosed masses of poisonous weeds in the water. They
decided that they must have been blown there after their arrival,
cleared the supply and yet, but two days later, when there had been no
wind of more than noticeable violence, the weeds were there again.
They abandoned their water supply for the time being and resorted to
the stream at the bottom of the canyon.

A day later one of their burros died mysteriously, and Bill, puzzled,
said he believed that it had lost its sense of smell and eaten
something poisonous. On the day following the other died, apparently
from the same complaint. The veteran miner grieved over them as for
friends.

"I've been acquainted with a good many of 'em," he said, sorrowfully,
"but I never knew two that had finer characters than these two did.
They were regular burros! No cheaters--just the square, open and
above-board kind, that never kicked without layin' back their ears to
give you warnin' and never laid down on the trail unless they wanted
to rest. The meanest thing a burro or a man can do is to die
voluntarily when you're dependin' on him, or when he owes you work or
money. So it does seem as if I must have been mistaken in these two,
after all, because we may need 'em."

Dick did not smile at his homily, for he caught the significance of
it, that the Croix d'Or would have to make a better showing than they
had so far discovered to warrant them in opening it. They had come
almost to the end of the investigations possible. They scanned plans
and scales in the office to familiarize themselves with the property,
and there was but one portion of it they had not visited. That was a
shaft which had been the "discovery hole," where the first find of ore
had been made. And it was this they entered on the day when Fate
seemed most particularly unkind. Yet even Fate appeared to relent, in
the end, through one of those trifling afterthoughts which lead men to
do the insignificant act. They had prepared everything for the
venture. They had an extra supply of candles, chalk for making a
course mark, sample bags for such pieces of ore as might interest
them, and the prospectors' picks and hammers when they started out.
They were a hundred yards from the office when the younger man
hesitated, stopped and turned back.

"I've an idea we might need those old maps," he said. "We haven't gone
over them very much