set and the man in it
drowned. No boat could have lasted long in that water, even with an
oar to steer it, and that was gone.

"I waded out inter ther water as far as I dared and by some freak of
the current the man who had toppled out of the boat came within my
reach. I grabbed him and dragged him ashore, more dead than alive. I
done what I could for him and he came to after a while. That was how I
met Blue Nose Sanchez.

"Well, sir, Blue Nose was a mighty sick man, even then. He had fever
and was a ravin' lunatic at times, but at intervals he made out to
tell me suthin' of his story. Him and his partner, a fellow he called
Foxy Joe, was on their way to find a little island down ther river
where no white man but only one had been. This man was a friend of
Foxy Joe's and the two met up in Yuma. Foxy's friend had a lot to tell
him about a wonderful island some Injuns had told him about whar
there was some sort of mysterious mineral. By what Joe could make out
this mineral was nuthin' more nor less than radium."

"Radium!" exclaimed the boys.

"That's right," went on the miner. "Foxy's friend allowed that there
was cartloads of it lyin' loose thar 'cording to the description the
Injuns give him, and he showed Foxy a sample of the stuff. That sample
is in this little lead-wrapped bottle. It's wrapped in lead 'cos
otherwise it 'ud make sores on you when you carry it about. It's
workin', workin' all the time, frum what I kin make out.

"Well, 'cordin' ter ther way Blue Nose Sanchez tells it, Foxy and the
man who knew about the island and had a rough plan of it the Injuns
drew fer him, had a fight, and Foxy kills him, or thinks he has. Blue
Nose sees it and sees Foxy take the map and the little lead-wrapped
bottle off the body. He suspects somethin' and tells Foxy that he'll
give him up to the law if he don't let him in on it. So Foxy tells
him all about it and him and Sanchez, who was then a mule rustler,
agrees ter go partners and go git ther radium, or whatever it is.

"They builds this boat, the one that disappeared, and in order that
Foxy shouldn't play no tricks, that bein' his disposition, Sanchez
'lows he'll take both the sample and the map. Foxy sees no way out of
it but to give in and that's the way it's fixed.

"The boat is taken out of Yuma in sections and then put together in a
place whar nobody ain't likely to come nosin' around. Then they starts
out on what I guess was the most darn-fool enterprise any