he smugglers spread blankets, unbuckled broad
money-belts from their waists, and stripped out the dobie dollars,
letting them fall in clinking heaps upon the cloth. The bargaining
began.

And when the last wares had been disposed of and the last huge silver
coin had been stowed away by the hard-eyed merchants, the Mexicans
opened little round kegs of mescal, the fiery liquor which is
distilled from the juice of the cactus plant.

They gambled at monte, quien con, and other games of chance. They
drank together. The night came on.

Sometimes pistols flamed under those adobe walls and knives gleamed in
the shadows.

Then, when the hot dawn came on, the burros were packed and the whole
troop filed down the hill; the seraped Mexicans riding along the
flanks of the train, their rifles athwart their saddles. The dust rose
about them, enwrapped them, and hid them from sight. Finally it
vanished where the flat lands reached away into the south.

But Schiefflin was indifferent to these wild goings on. To him the
Bruncknow house meant shelter from the Apaches; that was all. He could
roll up in his blankets here at night knowing that he would waken in
the morning without any likelihood of looking up into the grinning
faces of savages who had tracked him to his camp.

He minded his own business. As a matter of fact his own business was
the only thing he deemed worth minding. It was the one affair of
importance in the whole world. The more he saw of those hills the
surer he became that they contained minerals. Somewhere among them,
he fervently believed, an ore body of great richness lay hidden from
the world. And he had been devoting the years of his manhood to
seeking just such a secret. In those long years of constant search a
longing mightier than the lust for riches had grown within him.
Explorers know that longing and some great scientists; once it owns a
man he becomes oblivious to all else.

Every day Schiefflin set forth on his mule from the adobe house. He
rode out into the hills. All day he hunted through the winding gullies
for some bits of float which would betray the presence of an
outcropping on the higher levels. Once he cut the fresh trail of a
band of Apaches and once he caught sight of two mounted savages riding
along a slope a mile away. Several times he picked up specimens of
rock which bore traces of silver. But he found no ore worth assaying.

The men at the Bruncknow house saw him departing every mor