Longstreet came in and dropped the flap behind him. Then he stepped to a shelf and took down a roll of paper which he spread upon the table. Howard looking at it with lack-lustre eyes saw that it was a sort of geological chart of the neighbourhood. Longstreet set his finger upon a point where he had made a cross in red pencil.
'It's there,' he announced triumphantly.
Howard was thinking of the view from the cliff and failed to grasp the other's meaning.
'What's there?' he asked.
'Gold, man!' cried Longstreet. 'Gold! Didn't I say it was as simple as A B C to find gold here? Well, I've done it!'
'Oh, gold.' And even yet Howard's interest was not greatly intrigued. 'I see.'
Longstreet stared at him wonderingly. And then, suddenly, Howard came to earth. Why, the thing, if true, was wonderful, glorious! With all his heart he hoped it was true; for Longstreet's dear old sake, for Helen's. He studied the map.
'That would be right over yonder? About half a mile from here? In Dry Gulch?'
'Precisely. And it has been there since the time Dry Gulch was not dry but filled with rushing waters. It has been there for any man to find who was not a fool or blind. It rather looks,' and he chuckled, 'as though it had been waiting since the Pliocene age for me.'
'You are sure? You haven't just stumbled upon a little pocket----'
Longstreet snorted.
'I am going into the nearest fair-sized town right away,' he said emphatically, 'to get men and implements to begin a moderate development. It is a gold mine, my dear young sir--nothing else or less. Here; look at this.'
It was a handful of bits of quartz, brought up into the light from the depths of a sagging pocket. The quartz indicated high-grade ore; it was streaked and pitted with soft yellow gold.
'By the Lord, you've got it!' cried Howard. He wrung Longstreet's hand warmly. 'Good for you. You've got the thing you came for!'
'One of the things,' Longstreet corrected him with twinkling eyes.
'And the other?'
'Another gold mine! As our young friend Barbee puts it, I'm all loaded for bear this trip, partner!'
'And you haven't told Miss Helen? Or Carr?'
'Never a word. And for two very excellent reasons: Imprimis, they both were poking fun at me last night; Helen said that I couldn't find gold if it were in a minted twenty-dollar gold piece in my own pocket. Now I am having my revenge on them; I'll show them! Secundo: Next week comes Helen's birthday. I am going to give her a little surprise. A gold mine for a birthday present isn't bad, is it?'