to his own pronunciation of the words.

"I shall get among white men some day," he thought, "and it would be a
dreadful thing to be white myself and not talk white. Anyhow, I've
learned Mexican Spanish since I've been out here, and I'll be glad
enough to forget all I know of Indian talk."

He did not know it, but some things he said sounded ten years older and
wiser just for his manner of saying them. Besides, he had had to think
a great deal, and to keep most of his thoughts to himself. Not a great
many boys do that.

"Come on, Steve. That ledge isn't badly broken. Horses can follow it,
and it heads away right into the pine-forest. We must try it."

"We can get almost down into the valley without being seen."

"Yes, and we can find out if any good gap opens out of the valley to
the northward."

CHAPTER X

Captain Skinner and his miners were quickly at the head of that ravine
again, but the gold ledge stopped them all as if it had been a high
fence.

"Cap," said the man called Bill, "of course them two fellers lit onto
this mine. They couldn't ha' helped it. But they haven't done a
stroke of work on it. Reckon we kin set up marks of our own."

"'Twont pay."

"We can't leave a claim like this."

Every man of the party was of the same opinion, and Captain Skinner
said,

"Go ahead, boys. Only I can tell you one thing. We're going to move
out of this, through that western gap, before daylight to-morrow
morning. We're too near those red-skins down there to suit me.
There's no telling how many there may be of them."

The men sprung to their work with a will. The first thing they did was
to set up a "discovery monument" right in the middle of the ledge, at
the head of the chasm.

Large flat stones were laid down, others carefully set upon them, and
so up and up, till a pretty well shaped, four-sided pyramid had been
made, six feet square and as many high.

Then two more, nearly as large, were set up at the ends of the ledge,
where the gold vein disappeared in the high cliffs.

Seven strong men can do a great deal in a short time when they are in a
hurry and all understand exactly what to do.

"Now we'll go for supper, and send out the rest."

"Must have a shaft begun and a blast fired."

The miners have a law of their own among themselves that a man who
finds a mine must do some work on it and set up "marks," or else his
claim to it is of no value.

These miners only paid no attent