elix and helped him
with advice and kindness in unnumbered ways. He had built himself a
little hut of pine logs roofed with bark as a better protection than a
tent against the mountain storms. Felix sat there with him one night
before the rude stone hearth, while the rain fell in deluges outside
and the wind went calling and blustering down the valley. The miner
piled the fuel high upon the fire and, as the hours passed, told story
after story of wild adventure, of desperate escape, of bold crime, and
of the quick, merciless justice of the frontier. At last his fund of
narrative seemed to come to an end and he was silent for a little.

"Yes, these are rich diggings," he said finally, going back to the
subject of which they had first been talking, "but--there is more gold
even than this somewhere beyond. A man I knew once, a prospector, told
me a strange story. He was captured by the Indians and carried off to
the south, over beyond the mountains to the edge of the desert. He
escaped from them, but he got lost, trying to go back, and wandered
for days, nearly dying with thirst, torn and cut by the cactus
thorns, blind and nearly crazed by the terrible heat. He came to the
foot of a hill that he was too weak to climb and he lay down there to
die. But a rain fell and he lay soaking in it all night, drinking what
gathered in a rock pool beside him, with rattlesnakes and lizards, he
said, crawling up to drink with him and he never cared. In the morning
his head was clear and he looked up the hill to see the outcropping of
such a gold mine as you never dreamed of. Lying there on the open
slope was the gold-bearing quartz in plain sight, to be picked up with
your bare hands. He took some with him, but not much, for gold is
heavy when you are staggering weak, and he went on and on, lost again
and nearly dead, but at last he came to a settlement. He lay in a
Mexican's house, raving with fever for weeks, but in the end he got
well. But when he tried to go back to his mine he could never find the
way."

Felix was listening eagerly, but he did not interrupt or even ask a
question when the man paused. The deep voice rasped huskily, for
evidently the miner was telling his tale with an intent purpose.

"I have always meant, some day, to go and look for that mine myself,
when I found a comrade I could trust, one who would not be afraid of
the hardship and the danger. The way there is a terrible journey, but
I believe I know almost t