t the old
man was conscious part of the time and told him a good deal about the
strike--enough, I should think, to make it possible to find the place
again."

Haney and Jim were looking at him with intent faces, their interest
thoroughly aroused. Wellesly decided to draw on his imagination for
any necessary or interesting details that the prospector had not told
him.

"What did he say," Jim demanded, "and why didn't he go after it
himself?"

"As I remember it, he said that during his delirium Winters talked
constantly of his rich find, that he seemed to be going over the whole
thing again. He would exclaim, 'There, just look at that! As big as my
fist and solid gold!' 'Look at that seam! There's ten thousand dollars
there if there's a cent!' and many other such things. He would jump up
in bed and yell in his excitement. If he was really repeating what he
had seen and done while he was working his strike, Bill Frank said
that he must have taken out a big pile, probably up near a hundred
thousand dollars. That he really had found gold was proved by the
nuggets in his pockets."

"Did Winters tell him what he'd done with the ore?" Jim demanded. He
was evidently becoming very much interested.

"Frank told me that at the very last he seemed to be rational. He
realized that he was about to die and tried to tell Frank how to find
the gold he had taken out. He said he had hidden it in several places
and had tried to conceal the lead in which he had worked. It is likely
that the strike, whatever it was, had upset his head a little and made
him do queer things before he got lost and heat-crazed on the desert."

"Well, did this man tell you where he'd hid the dust?"

"Do you know where it is?"

"My informant, Bill Frank, said that Winters was very weak when he
came to his senses and could only whisper a few disconnected sentences
before he died, and part of those," Wellesly went on, smiling at the
recollection, "Frank said 'the darn fool wasted on gratitude.' But he
gathered that the Winters mine was somewhere in the southern part of
the Oro Fino mountains, not far from a canyon where there was good
water, and that he had hidden the nuggets and dust and rich rock that
he had taken out, in tin cans and kettles and bottles in another
canyon not far away."

"Why didn't your chap go and 'unt for it 'imself?" asked Haney.

"He did spend several weeks trying to find it, and nearly died of
thirst, and broke his leg falling o