Two days later the lad was able to sit up in bed and to enter upon a
discussion as to the future with Tom and the miner. It was begun by the
latter.
"I suppose you will be taking the first ship back as soon as you are
strong enough?" he said.
"I don't know, Dave; now I am here I should certainly like a run ashore
for a few weeks and to see something of the country. We have got twenty
pounds between us; that will last for some time. I should think we could
get a passage back without having to pay on this side for it, and if
there was any difficulty about it, we could work our way back; but Tom
agrees with me, we should like to see something of the country first.
"I suppose in another fortnight I shall be all right again; but there is
the doctor to pay. I don't know what their charges are here, but I
expect his bill will be a pretty long one. You had better tell him
to-day that we have not got a great deal of cash between us, and that as
I only want building up now, he need not come again."
"Don't you trouble yourself about that," Dave growled. "You don't
suppose that when you have got yourself cut and sliced about in helping
me you are going to have any trouble about doctors? We have got a tidy
lot at present amongst us, and what is ours is yourn. We were going
to set off among the hills a day or two after the time we had
that trouble; only, of course, that stopped it all."
"Please don't stop on my account," Dick said. "I shall get on very well
now, and I was saying to Tom, as soon as I can get about we will go off
somewhere among the hills; for one might just as well be lying in an
oven as here. If you will tell us where you and your mates are working,
we might find our way there, and get a job. We are both pretty strong,
you know--that is to say, when we are well--and we have often said that
we should like to try our luck gold-mining."
"We aint agoing till you are strong enough to get about," Dave said; "so
it is no use saying any more about that. Then, if you want to do some
mining, we will put you in the way of it; but we are going on a long
expedition, which may last months, and from which, as like as not, we
shall never come back again. However, we can easy enough take you with
us for a bit and drop you at one of the mining camps, and stop there
with you till you get accustomed to it, or work for a few months with
you if you like. Time is not of much consequence to us."
"That is awfully good of you, Dave," Tom said, "but as you have lost
more than a fortnight at present, and I suppose it will be another
fortnight before Dick is strong enough to travel, it isn't fair on you;
and perhaps you might be able to introduce us to some men going up to
the hills--that is, if you think that we could not go with you on this
expedition you talk of."
"That won't be a job for young hands," Dave said. "It will be a mighty
long journey over a terrible rough country, where one's life will be
always in one's hands, where one's eyes will always be on the lookout
for an enemy, and one will know that any moment, night or day, one may
hear the war yell of the Indians. We are going into the heart of
Arizona, to places where not half-a-dozen white men, even counting
Mexicans as white men, have ever set foot; at least, where not
half-a-dozen have ever come back alive from, though maybe there are
hundreds who have tried."
"Then I suppose you are going to look for some very rich mine, Dave?"
"That is so; I will tell you how it came about, and queerly enough, it
wur pretty well the same way as your friend and me came together. My
mates and me were coming down from the hills when we heard a shot fired
in a wood ahead of us. It wasn't none of our business, but we went on at
a trot, thinking as how some white men had been attacked by greasers."
"What are greasers?" Tom asked.
Dave laughed.
"A greaser is just a Mexican. Why they call them so I don't know; but
that has been their name always as long as I came in the country. Well,
we ran down and came sudden upon two greasers who were kneeling by a man
lying in the road, and seemed to be searching his pockets. We let fly
with our Colts; one of them was knocked over, and the other bolted. Then
we went to look at the man in the road; he wur a greaser too. He had
been shot dead. 'I wonder what they shot him for?' says I. 'Maybe it is
a private quarrel; maybe he had struck it rich, and has got a lot of
gold in his belt. We may as well look; it is no use leaving it for that
skunk that bolted to come back for.' He had got about twenty ounces in
his belt, and we shifted it into our bag, and were just going on when
'Zekel--that is one of my mates--said, 'I know this cuss, Dave; it's the
chap that lived in that village close to where we were working six
months ago; they said he had been fossicking all over Arizona, and that
he was the only one who ever came back out of a party who went to locate
a wonderful rich spot it was said he knew of.
"'He tried over and over again to get up another party, but no one would
try after that first failure. We may just as well search him all over;
it may be he has got a plan of the place somewhere about him, and it is
like enough those fellows have killed him on the chance of finding it.'
"So we searched him pretty thorough, and at last we found a paper sewn
up in the collar of his jacket. Sure enough it was a plan. We did not
examine it then, for someone might have come along, and we might have
been accused of the chap's murder; so I shoved it into the inside pocket
of my shirt, and we went on. We looked at it that night; there was
several marks on it and names, one of which we had heard of, though we
had never been so far in the Indian country. Well, as you may guess, we
had some big talks over it, and at last we reckoned we would have a try
to find it.
"We had been lucky, and had struck it rich at the last place we had been
at, and we agreed, instead of spending our money in a spree or at the
monte tables, we would fit out an expedition and try it. Now I believe
that attack was made on me to try and get that piece of paper. The chap
who bolted may like enough have hid himself and watched us, and may have
seen us find it and me take charge of it. We thought more than once
since we came down here that we were being dogged by a greaser, but we
never thought about the paper. That evening I had been out by myself,
which I did not often do, for we in general went about together, and was
going back along that street, and was pretty nigh home, when someone
said in Spanish, 'That is the fellow,' and then five men jumped out with
knives in their hands. I had just time to whip out my six-shooter and
fire once. One fellow went down, but at the same moment I got a clip
across my wrist with a knife, and down went the pistol. Then I got a
slice across the head, and another on the shoulder, and down I went. Two
of them threw themselves on me, and I shammed dead, knowing that if I
moved it was all over with me. One of them shoved his hand in my
trousers pockets, and the other tore my shirt open. I heard a sudden
row, a blow, and the fall of a body; then one of them came tumbling down
on the top of us and knocked the two fellows over, then they jumped up,
and I heard your pistol crack twice and two falls, and as I got up on to
my feet to lend a hand I saw one of the fellows bolting down the street,
running off in another direction. That was the one, I think, that came
down on the top of us.
"I have been wondering since then how it was that that fellow fell, for
you did not fire till they jumped up."
Dick explained that he had felled one with a blow from the stick, and
not having time to strike with it again, had sent the second staggering
over the group with a blow of his fist; "those are the two that got
away, I expect," he said.
"I expect so; there were four bodies on the ground--yours, the two
fellows you shot, and the one I wiped out to begin with."
"Has there been any row about it?" Dick asked.
"No; they take these things quietly. If it had been one of my mates and
me who had killed three Mexicans, our story that we had been attacked
might not have been believed, but as it was certain a young ship's
officer would not have joined me in falling foul of three natives, they
just took and buried them, and there was an end of it."