had learned the secret
of silence during the long years he had spent on the desert.

After the evening meal old McGee put in an appearance and a bargain
was struck. But if he was, as Zeb put it, "close-mouthed" on some
subjects, he was not on others.

"So yer are a'goin' out inter the desert, hey?" he asked the boys.

"That's our intention," said Dick.

The old man shook his head.

"The desert's a tough place," he said. "A mighty tough place. Reckon
it's likely yer are er goin' prospectin', maybe?"

The boys returned an evasive answer. But old McGee rambled on with the
crisscross wrinkles forming and fading round his washed-out blue eyes.

"Wa'al, I had my share on it, ain't I, Zeb?" said the old man to Zeb,
who had just strolled up, smoking a short, black pipe. The professor,
after adjusting his difficulties with the landlord, was sorting and
labeling specimens in his room.

"Reckon you have, Pete," responded the yellow-bearded miner. "You
didn't never find that thar lost Peg-leg Smith mine, did yer?"

"No; but I will some day," declared the old man, a fanatic gleam
shining in his faded optics. "I'll find it some day, Zeb. I never got
to it, but I come mighty close--yes, sir, ole Pete he come mighty
close."

"Tell the boys about Peg-leg Smith's lost mine," suggested Zeb.

"Give me the fillin's, then, an' I will," said old Pete, holding out
a blackened and empty corncob, "though I'm surprised they ain't never
heard on it. Thought everybody had heard of Peg-leg's mine."

"Wa'al, you see they come frum ther East," explained Zeb
apologetically.

"Ah, that accounts fer it," said old Pete indulgently. "You couldn't
'spec Easterners ter know nuthin' 'bout it. 'Wa'al, young sirs,
somewheres out on the desert ter the east uv here thar is three buttes
a stickin' up, and right thar is Peg-leg Smith's lost mine whar they
say the very sands is uv gold.

"Who was Peg-leg? Wa'al, that's in a way not very well known. Anyhow,
his name was Smith, and he was shy an off leg, and so he gets his
name. Back in 1836 Peg-leg he blows inter Yuma with a party of
trappers that hed worked down ther Colorado.

"They decides to quit trapping and go ter gold huntin', and makes
their way up the Gila River and then cuts off inter ther desert. Frum
Yuma they goes southeast and kep' on fer four days across the desert.
At ther end of the fourth day they 'lows that ther water ain' a-goin'
ter hold out a turrible lot longer, and they dec