"

Andy took a last, lingering pull at the cigarette stub, flung it into
the backened forge, and picked up the spur. He settled his hat on his
head at its accustomed don't-give-a-darn tilt, and started for the
door and the sunlight.

"Oh, but say! didn't you find out anything about it afterwards? There
must have been something--"

"If it's relics uh the dim and musty past yuh mean, there was; relics
to burn. I kicked up specimens of ancient dishes, and truck like that,
while I was prowling around for fire-wood. And inside the castle, in
what I reckon was used for the main hall, I run acrost a skeleton.
That is, part of one. I don't believe it was all there, though."

"But, man alive, why haven't you made use of a discovery like that?"
Branciforte followed him out, lighting his pipe with fingers that
trembled. "Don't you realize what a thing like that means?"

Andy turned and smiled lazily down at him. "At the time I was there, I
was all took up with the idea uh getting home. I couldn't eat
skeletons, Mister, nor yet the remains uh prehistoric dishes. And I
didn't run acrost no money, nor no plan marked up with crosses where
you're supposed to do your excavating for treasure. It wasn't nothing,
that I could see, for a man to starve to death while he examined it
thorough. And so far as I know there ain't any record of it. I never
heard no one mention building it, anyhow." He stooped and adjusted the
spur to his heel to see if it were quite right, and went off to the
stable humming under his breath.

Branciforte stood at the door of the blacksmith shop and gazed after
him, puffing meditatively at his pipe. "Lord! the ignorance of these
Western folk! To run upon a find like that, and to think it less
important than getting home in time for supper. To let a discovery
like that lie forgotten, a mere incident in a day's travel! That
fellow thinks more, right now, about his horse going lame and himself
raising blisters on his heels, than of--Jove, what ignorance! He--he
couldn't _eat_ the skeleton or the dishes! Jerusalem!" Branciforte
knocked his pipe gently against the door-casing, put in into his coat
pocket and hurried to the house to hunt up the others and tell them
what he had heard.

That night the roundup pulled in to the home ranch.

The visitors, headed by their host, swooped down upon the roundup
wagons just when the boys were gathered together for a cigarette or
two apiece and a little talk before rolling