CHAPTER II
GOLD
"Look a-here, Tom," said "Old Man" Truex late that evening as he was busying himself amongst his pots and pans that shone and twinkled and glittered like so many kindly, ruby-eyed hobgoblins, "what are you goin' t'do with your half of all them opprobrious riches down yonder in the Yankee Doodle Glory?" He waved a hand through the window towards the Hoodoos that coiled back to the star-lit firmament in a great wave of carved, black stone.
Tom was toasting his legs in front of the glowing hearth. He was tired and sleepy and happy. All morning he had ridden; then the long up-hill pull on foot from "Swede" Johnson's homestead to the cabin; and finally three hours' climbing and slipping in and about the prospect hole of the Yankee Doodle Glory under his partner's guidance. It had not meant much to him: just a flat facet of shimmering quartz where the old miner's pickaxe had uncovered it, something like a trail of haggard, indifferent light that disappeared in the frowning maw of a rudely blasted, rudely timbered tunnel, and a small heap of what to him had appeared to be rubbish, but which his partner had handled as a fond mother handles her firstborn and had designated as: "Gold, my lad! Virgin gold, or I'm a Dutchman!"
"Sure it isn't fool's gold?" Tom asked now with a laugh.
