On the top of the first bluff they tied their horses
again and took a foot trail where the bluff, having rolled back a mile
from the river, tumbled precipitately into a deep yawning gully. From
the timbered eminence the prospect below was as dank and gloomy as a
paleolithic fern forest. Sodden, mossy, and almost impenetrable, the
hill split and dropped into Choke Gulch. From far down within the black
and tangled fastnesses came the solemn ripple of slow-running water. A
veil of weird loneliness hung over the cavernous place and the air that
shivered up to the three was cool and laden with damp, sweet odours. Old
Bernique began to descend. As they proceeded, the old man's sense of
something stupendous impressed itself more and more upon his companions.
Farther on down, the solemn quiet of the Gulch became unbearable, but no
one spoke. Little sunlight penetrated the dense curtain of brown and
red leaves overhead, and what little flickered through had an electric
brightness against the dead brown of the leaf-carpeted ground and the
grey and hoary tree-trunks. Every bird that came to the tree-tops sang
once, but it was only when he discovered his mistake, lifted his wings
and careened away gladly into the upper light.

"Whayee!" Piney found a shivering voice at last, "ef I never git rich
till I come down into an ugly hole fer riches I'll be mighty pore all my
days." Bruce smiled absently at the boy's susceptibility, but threw a
reassuring arm about his shoulder. He smiled again when presently Piney
drew away. That was Piney's habit, as affectionate in instinct as a
kitten, and as timid of manifestation as a wild doe.

Old Bernique called his little party to a halt at the bottommost dip of
the Gulch, where a deep, clear and rock-bound spring wound murmurously
over a rocky bed. Two red spots came out in the old man's cheeks, his
eyes began fairly to flame again, his breath came in wheezy gasps, and
his old face pinched up sharp and sensitive as a pointer's nose. He
pointed to the debris of shattered rock about the spring. "The wataire
fell over a cap-rock here," he said brusquely, the nervous constriction
of his throat making it hard for him to say anything. "The strata
underneath were soft and had been worn away by the wataire. I put a
duck-nest of dynamite in there this morning,--and--see--there!"

Anybody could see; the zinc and lead ores were disseminated, rich and
warm, in the loose rocks of the out-cropping. "It's a v