ecting long enough to get you safe into the town. Eh, pard?"

"Yes, I can," Jim replied, "if the tenderfoot wants to make it enough
worth while. I ain't stuck on the trip and I don't want to fool any
more time away around here. You two have got to decide what you're
a-going to do mighty quick. I want to get to prospectin', and if I
have to tote you-all down to El Paso you'll have to pay big for the
favor."

Wellesly did not reply and Haney, who was looking critically at a big
boulder on the top of the canyon wall, burst into the conversation
with an exclamation:

"My stars! Do you see that 'uge boulder up there, just above the
narrow place in the canyon? 'Ow easy it would be, now, wouldn't it,
for two men to get up there and pry it loose. It would crash down
there and fill up that whole blamed trail, wouldn't it, Mr. Wellesly?"

"Yes, and effectually wall up anybody who might have had the bad luck
to be left in here," Wellesly dryly replied. "But speaking of the
dangers of crossing the desert," he went on, "I remember a story told
me once in Denver by a prospector who had been down in this country.
It was about a lost mine, the Winters mine. Did you ever hear of it?"

"Yes," said Jim, "I have. I've heard about it many a time. It's in
these mountains somewhere."

"It was so rich," Wellesly went on, "that Dick Winters knocked the
quartz to pieces with a hammer and selected the chunks that were
filled with gold. He said the rock was seamed and spotted with yellow
and he brought out in his pocket a dozen bits as big as walnuts that
were almost solid gold."

The two men were listening with interested faces. Jim nodded. "Yes,
that's just what I've heard about it. But there are so darn many of
them lost mines and so many lies told about 'em that you never can
believe anything of the sort."

"What became of this chap and 'is mine?" asked Haney.

"I reckon the mine's there yet, just where he left it," Jim answered,
"but Dick went luny, crossin' the desert, and wandered around so long
in the heat without water that when he was picked up he was ravin'
crazy and he didn't get his senses back before he died. All anybody
knows about his mine is what he said while he was luny, and you can't
put much stock in that sort of thing."

"I don't know about that," said Wellesly. "I had the story from the
man who took care of him before he died, the prospector I spoke of
just now--I think his name was Frank, Bill Frank. He said tha