There wasn’t much sleeping done in the cabin that night, there was so much to talk about.  To say that the hunters were very much pleased over the success of Tom’s lucky shots would be putting it very mildly.  Elam was much elated to know it was a camel, an animal he had never seen before, and not a genuine ghost, who had stood between him and the finding of the nugget.  He was not satisfied until he had burned up three or four brands in going out to see the object to make sure it was there yet.  To tell the truth, this Red Ghost had often stood between Elam and the accomplishment of his hopes; and as much as he desired to possess the nugget he did not dare face it alone.

“It is there yet,” said Elam, coming in once more and throwing a half-burned chunk upon the fire.  “Tom, you have made me your everlasting debtor.  Now I hope the finding of the nugget will go the same way.”

“I hope I can have the same effect upon your other work,” said Tom modestly.  “If I do, you will call me a lucky omen.”

“What is an ’omen’?” asked Elam, who had never heard the word before.

“Why, it is an occurrence supposed to show the character of some future event.  That is about as near as I can come to it.  If I am with you, you will find the nugget without the least trouble:  if I am not, you won’t.”

“Well, I’ll see that you don’t get very far from me till I find out what this map means.  There is something hidden there, and I know it.”

It was while we were talking in this way that daylight came, and I began getting breakfast while Elam and Uncle Ezra smoked, and Ben and Tom were packing up the skins which had fallen to Ben’s rifle during the hunt.  I could see that Ben was sadly disappointed in not being permitted to accompany Elam on his search for the nugget, but like the soldier he was, he gave right up.  He knew that his father did not believe in such things anyway, and very likely his refusal would have been more pointed than Uncle Ezra’s.  When the breakfast was over all hands turned to and washed the dishes and put them away.  We calculated to visit the camp again during the winter, and, if we did, we wanted to know what we had to go on.  Then we went out to saddle our horses and take a last look at the Red Ghost.

“Are we going to leave this thing here?” asked Ben.

“Sure!” replied Uncle Ezra.  “We can’t carry it with us.”

“I’ll bet I don’t leave it all here,” said Elam, going into the cabin and returning with an axe in his hand.  “The folks down there won’t believe that we killed anything, and I am going to have one of the feet.”

The thing was hideous when we came to look at it by daylight, and especially the great hoofs with which it had tramped so far.  They were lacerated in every direction, and one cut had hardly had time to heal before it got another.  Elam plied the axe vigorously, and in a few moments each boy had a foot which he was to take along to show to the people “down there.”  Finally Uncle Ezra said he would take the head.  It was scarred and seamed all over, but he thought that anyone who had seen a camel would be sure to recognize it.  Then we brought up the horses, but I tell you it took two men to saddle them.  They couldn’t bear the scent of the camel; I had to take my nag out of sight of it, and it was a long time before he quit snorting.  With a good deal of merriment we got them all saddled at last, and with Tom and Ben riding my horse and Elam’s, we bid good-by to our camp in the mountains.  We had twenty miles to go and then we were among friends again.

“Say,” said Elam, when he had allowed the others to get so far ahead that there was no danger of their overhearing our conversation, “I don’t think I am crazy; do you?”

“I never thought so,” said I, although I knew there had been some talk of it in the settlement.  “I was sure if that nugget was there you would find it.  I shouldn’t have offered to go with you if I had thought you were crazy.”

“You have seen the map and know just what there is onto it?” continued Elam.

“I certainly have.”

“And you know the place where it starts is over there by those springs?”

“I do certainly.”

“And do you think that those men would carry around a map of that kind unless there was something on it?” said Elam, going over the argument he had used the night before with Uncle Ezra.

“No, I don’t think they would.  And it’s your ditty-bag that they took from you when you were shot.”

“I know it; and many’s the time I have thought of it, too, and never expected to see it again.  Thank goodness, I have two men with me who don’t think I am crazy!  I have told Uncle Ezra that I never would give it up again until I have that nugget in my hands.  I know that gully up there, and it is a pretty big place.  Now, that is all I have to say.  If you want to know anything more, now is the time to ask me.”

“Don’t you think that there are other parties up there, hunting for it?” I asked, knowing that his story had been noised abroad.  “Just think; you have been looking for it fourteen years.”

“Longer than that; and I ought to get it, for they say that perseverance conquers all things.  As for other parties looking for it, why, they can get it if they want it.  But where’s the map?”

“That’s so.  I think you have got the only one there is in existence.”

“I only hope there are other fellows looking for the nugget,” said Elam, shifting his rifle from one shoulder to the other, “because we won’t have to work where they have been.  It will make matters so much easier for us.”

After that Elam kept still about the nugget, and during the whole of the twenty miles I never heard him speak of it again.  We accomplished the journey just about dark, Elam and I walking all the way, and Tom I know was glad to get back among civilized people once more.  My headquarters were right there with Uncle Ezra, for I had only four men to take care of my small herd, and didn’t think it best to get too far away from him.  We rode up to the shanty and began to dismount, when the door flew open and the foreman of the ranch appeared on the threshold.

“Well, I declare, if there aint Uncle Ezra!” he exclaimed in a stentorian voice.  “What you got?  Enough furs to load one horse with?”

While the foreman was speaking he untied the bundle of skins and laid it upon the porch, when he happened to discover Tom Mason.  He did not say anything, but nodded to Tom, and then turned his attention to his employer’s horse, whom he had unsaddled while one was thinking about it.

“Are you here all alone?” asked Uncle Ezra.

“All alone!” replied the foreman.  “You see, there has been a blizzard lately, and we thought we had better look up the sheep.  I have just got in.  What have you got in that bag?”

“Something that will make your eyes bulge out,” replied Uncle Ezra.  “Wait till we get in, and we will show it to you.”

The horses, being unsaddled, were turned loose to go where they chose; the foreman carried Ben’s bundle of skins into the cabin, and Uncle Ezra brought up the rear with the bag containing what was left of the prize.  There was a fire burning brightly at one end of the room, and Tom and Ben drew camp-stools up in front of it to get some heat, while Elam and I took our overcoats off and waited for Uncle Ezra to turn out the contents of the bag.  We waited until the old frontiersman had hung up his coat and hat where they belonged and seated himself on a camp-stool before the fire, and then the head and four feet of the camel were tumbled out on the floor.

“What in the name of common sense are those?” cried the foreman in astonishment.

“They are part of the Red Ghost,” said Uncle Ezra; and then he went on to tell the story much as I have told it, although he put in some additions of his own.  The foreman was profoundly amazed.  Not daring to use his hands, he used a poker to move the things about, so that he could see on all sides of them.  The antics he went through were enough to make the hunters laugh.

“What do you think now about my being crazy?” demanded Elam.  “I’ve shot at that thing, and I don’t see why I didn’t get him; but I can see now why it was.  He was so big that a bullet had to be put in the right place to get him.”

“That’s about the case with everything I have shot, Elam,” said the foreman.  “I had to put the ball in the right place, or I didn’t get him.  But you have removed a heap from my mind.  Who shot him?”

“Here’s the man, right here.”

Seeing that the foreman began to take a deeper interest in Tom after that, Uncle Ezra introduced him, and he failed to say that Tom had got into a “little trouble” down in Mississippi where he used to live, and had come out West to get clear of it.  Uncle Ezra didn’t think that was any of his business.  He said that Tom wanted to see new sights, and he reckoned he had already had his fill of them, having been lost in the mountains and shot the Red Ghost besides.  Now, he was going into partnership with Elam after the nugget, and Uncle Ezra thought he had a boy who could be depended upon.  The foreman shook hands with Tom, and said he was glad to see him.  Then he wanted to know whether they had eaten supper yet.

“Well, no,” replied Uncle Ezra.  “You see, we started from our camp up there sooner than we expected.  Elam has got a map telling him where to look to find his nugget.”

“Ah, get out!” said the foreman.  He had heard so many things about a “map” that he did not believe a word of it.

“Well, he has, sure enough.  It came from the man who tried to rob him.  And you haven’t heard anything about the Indians, have you?”

“Indians!” exclaimed the foreman.  “Have they broken out?”

“Just give your knife to Elam and sit down,” said Uncle Ezra.  “It appears to me that we have heard of a heap of things that you don’t know anything about.”

The man gave Elam his knife, which he had in his hand to begin work with upon the ham he had laid upon the table, and sat down.

“I wondered all the time what was the matter with Elam’s hand,” said he.  “I hope the Indians didn’t shoot him.”

“Didn’t they, though?” said Elam.  “You just wait and hear Uncle Ezra tell the story.”

It was a long narrative that the old frontiersman had to tell, and I saw that Elam was so much interested in it that he forgot all about the supper, and I got up and assisted him; and that was all he wanted.  He left me to do the work, and sat down.  The foreman heard Uncle Ezra through without interruption, and then turned and gave Elam a good looking over.  After that he got up and assisted me with the supper.

“So Elam has really got a map of the place where that nugget is hid?” were the first words he uttered.  He didn’t seem to care a straw about the Indians, but he did care about the gold.  “I wish I knew the man he shot to get it.”

After that the evening was just what you would expect of one spent in a hunter’s camp, or one passed in a sheep-herder’s ranch, which was the same thing.  We ate supper; then those who were inclined to the weed enjoyed their good-night smoke, and talked of ghosts, Indians, and sheep-herder’s life until we were all tired out and went to bed.  We had regular bunks to sleep in, and could thrash around all we had a mind to without fear of disturbing anyone else.  The foreman got up once to replenish the fire and take a look at the weather, and I heard him say, when he crawled back into his bunk, that it was a clear, cold night-just the one that sheep enjoy.

When I awoke I found the foreman busy in the storeroom in putting up our three months’ supplies and Uncle Ezra engaged in cooking breakfast.  Ben was seated at one end of the table, engaged in writing a letter to his father, and Elam had gone out after a certain stockman to carry it to the fort for him.  It was dark, and you couldn’t see a thing.

“I think it best to let the boy’s father know when he is well off,” said Uncle Ezra, returning my greeting.  “It aint everybody who would go to that trouble, I confess-sending a lone man off in a country that has been infested with Indians.  But I know how it is myself.  If I had a boy -”

“You have got one,” I said.  “There’s Elam.”

“Elam!” said the frontiersman in a tone of contempt.  “Elam went to work and got himself into a fuss without saying a word to me about it.  Elam! now he’s got a map that he thinks will show him where the gold is hidden.”

“But don’t you think there is something hidden there?” asked Ben.

“Now, wait till I tell you.  I don’t know; but every scrap he gets hold of he thinks it is a map.  That’s what makes me mad at Elam.  And you, dog-gone you!  You have got better sense than that.”

I had heard all I wanted to out of Uncle Ezra.  It was plain that he didn’t think there was anything in that map.  Well, as Elam said, it was all in a lifetime.  My time wasn’t worth anything to me, for I had men to do the work, and if I made a botch of it, if there wasn’t anything to be made by digging up that gully, there was one thing out of the way.  Elam was bound to become a cattle-herder in case this thing failed.  He was determined to go to Texas, for he couldn’t live there and have that nugget thrown at him by every man he met, and I would go with him.  Uncle Ezra had often made offers for my cattle, intending to leave sheep-herding on account of the wolves, and invest all his extra money in steers, and if this thing turned out a failure he could have them and welcome.  I would be as deep in the mud as Elam was, and I didn’t care to have the thing thrown up at me all the time.  Texas was the land of promise with us fellows, any way.  The fellows there had got into the way of driving cattle to northern markets and selling them, and in that way we could at least see our friends once every year.  So I didn’t care what Uncle Ezra said about it.

In about an hour Elam came back with the stockman of whom he had been in search.  His name was Sandy; I never heard him called by any other name, and if his pluck only equalled his red hair and whiskers he certainly had lots of it.  Of course we had to go through with the Red Ghost and Tom’s being lost, the discovery of the map and Elam’s escape from the Indians, but Sandy never said a word about it.  He just sat on his camp-stool with his elbows resting on his knees, and looked up at Uncle Ezra.  When the latter got through with his story he simply said: 

“Where’s the letter?”

Of course it was arranged that Sandy should go with us as far as the canyon that led to the springs, and beyond that he was to take care of himself.  With his letter tucked away in his pocket, he shook Ben by the hand, and told him that his father would receive what he had written by noon the next day; and then we all mounted and rode off.  Tom had been supplied with a pair of boots to take the place of his moccasons, and rode a horse that belonged to Uncle Ezra.  We had two mules with us, Elam leading the one and I the other, which carried our supplies and also our digging tools; for we intended to dig as no people had ever dug before for that nugget.

“I hope you will get it, boys,” said Sandy, as he lifted his hat to us when we reached the canyon that branched off from his trail.  “But I have my doubts.”

“Oh, of course we’re cranks!” said Elam.

“I never said that of you,” said Sandy reproachfully.  “I always said that if the nugget was there you’d get it.”

“And how am I going to find out where the nugget is unless I have a map?” demanded Elam.  “I’ve got one now, and if I make a failure of this thing, I am going to Texas.  When you see me again I’ll have the nugget.  Good-by.”

We saw no Indians, although we kept a bright lookout for them, and about three o’clock in the afternoon arrived at the springs, for I do not know what else to call them.  We had had no dinner, intending to leave it until we got to our camping place, and while Tom and I unsaddled and staked out the horses, Elam strolled away with his rifle on his shoulder to look up the springs.  He was gone fully an hour, and when he came back he set his rifle down and never said a word.  I knew that something was the matter, but I thought I would wait until he got ready to tell it.  He ate his dinner; he ate a good hearty one, too, so that the news he had brought did not interfere with his appetite, and filled his pipe; and then I knew that something was coming.

“Carlos,” said he, as he stretched his legs out in front of him, “those springs have all been tampered with.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They have been tampered with the same as this one has,” continued Elam, pointing to the spring at which our horses had drank.  “All the stuff and leaves have been pulled out of them.”

“Well, what of it?”

“What of it?  It means that somebody has been going in on our trail.”

“All right; let it be so.  You found all the springs, didn’t you?  We’re on their trail, and if we overtake them at the end of a week we will see what we can do with them.  You said yourself that it would make things easier for us.”

“Yes, I know I said it, but I don’t like to see that people are so hot after that nugget.”

It did seem to me that everyone had got wind of that nugget, and were going after it at the same time.  How it came about I did not know.  Here they had gone on for two years and let Elam dig where he had a mind to, and now when he knew where the gold was, other people knew it too and were determined to have it.  I suggested that it might be those men who had robbed him, but Elam laughed at it.

“Those men never came near here,” said Elam.  “Otherwise, how did they strike my camp fifty miles away?  It has been done by somebody nearer than that, and has been done by somebody within three weeks, too.”

From this time out (we were all of two weeks on the trail) Elam was moody.  He would ride all day and wouldn’t say a word to either of us, and when we made camp at night he would go off and stay until dark.  And the worst of it was, we camped every single night right where the men had slept.  I began to shake in my boots, and did not wonder at Elam’s contrary mood.  In fact we were all that way.  It was very seldom that we exchanged an opinion with one another.  Elam kept his map constantly at hand and referred to it at every turn in the road.  Sometimes he would be gone all day, and we would hear nothing of him until night, when he would come in, ask for supper, and roll himself up in his blanket and go to sleep.  Things went on in this way for two weeks, as I said, and then one day, as we were watering our horses at the brook that ran through the canyon, we were suddenly surprised by the appearance of two men who stood on the opposite bank.  They were a hard-looking set, but then that was to be expected in a country where all men lived out of doors.  To show that they were friendly they threw their rifles into the hollow of their arms.

“Howdy, pard?” said one.

“Howdy?” replied Elam.  As he was the chief man we allowed him to do all the talking.

“You’re just the men we wanted to see,” said the man in a delighted tone.  “We haven’t had anything to eat since yisterday.  Will ye give us a bite?”

“Sure!” replied Elam.  “What are you doing so far away in the mountains?”

“We got lost, and are now trying to find our way out.  This stream leads to some water on the prairie, I reckon?  How far is the fort from here?”

Elam made some reply, I didn’t know what it was, while I began to look the men over to see if I could discover any signs of their being lost.  Their moccasons were whole, or as much so as could be expected, and the wear and tear of their buckskin shirts was no more than our own.  They were strangers to me, and I confess that I was not at all pleased to see them.  The talk about their being lost was one thing that did the business for me.  The men were hunters or trappers on the face of them; they never would be taken for anything else, and the idea of their getting bewildered in the mountains that they had probably passed over a dozen times was a little too far fetched.  I caught a glimpse of Elam’s face as he was leading his horse up the opposite bank, and there was a look on it that boded mischief.