A TALE OF THE COLORADO.
"Do you fully realize what you are telling me?" asked the professor.
The doctor and the nurse had left the room, and the miner, the
scientist and the boys were alone.
"Course I do," was the rejoinder of the yellow-bearded giant with the
bandaged head. "There ought ter be a fortune in it 'cording to what
Blue Nose Sanchez said. Was he lyin', Professor?"
"I don't think so. But tell us your story," urged the man of science.
"Well, it begins some months ago. I was prospecting down along the
Colorado River. It was in a mighty bad place. Don't rightly know just
how I ever got thar, but thar I was. Wonder was I wasn't killed ten
times over 'fore I got to whar I was. But I guess I'm pretty tough.
"That Colorado River is a pretty tough place down where I was.
Nothing but desert all around, and just a swift dashing current at the
bottom of a canyon that looks like it went into the middle of the
earth with steep, dark walls that seem to go straight plum up to the
sky.
"But I was lured on by the thought of making a big strike. At last I
got down to a place where the banks was so high and steep that it was
like twilight even at noon. Grub was gittin' to be a question with me,
and I'd about made up my mind to turn back, but I thought I'd make one
more last try.
"I set to work on a rocky bank with my pick but nary a color--that's
what we call a trace of gold--could I uncover.
"Wa'al, says I to myself, it's up stakes fer you, Zeb, unless you want
to starve afore you git back to civilization. But as it was evenin'
then I decided to stay whar I was that night and strike back early the
next day.
"Here's whar Blue Nose Sanchez comes inter ther story. They called
him 'blue nose,' I guess, because of a premature blast that had blown
powder into his nose and turned it that color. Anyway, he was a mighty
homely specimen.
"It was just gittin' light in the canyon, although it must have been
broad day up above, when I hears an almighty hollering up the gulch.
The next thing I knows, round a bend comes a small boat. There's two
men in it. They must have been crazy to try to make the passage, for
the river is just a mass of rapids and whirlpools, and I never heard
of anyone trying to shoot 'em.
"But thar was these two fellows in this boat, and they was scared,
too, I kin tell you. Wa'al, I stood thar like a stuffed pig on the
bank watching 'em as they came toward me at the speed of an express
train. Suddenly one of 'em, the chap that was trying to steer, twisted
the oar he was guiding the boat with and it cracked under his weight.
He went overboard in a flash.
"The next moment, with a yell of fright that I kin hear yit, the boat
was hurried past me on that water that boiled like yeast in a kittle,
and in a flash it had disappeared round another bend. What became of
it I never knew, but it must have been upset and the man in it
drowned. No boat could have lasted long in that water, even with an
oar to steer it, and that was gone.
"I waded out inter ther water as far as I dared and by some freak of
the current the man who had toppled out of the boat came within my
reach. I grabbed him and dragged him ashore, more dead than alive. I
done what I could for him and he came to after a while. That was how I
met Blue Nose Sanchez.
"Well, sir, Blue Nose was a mighty sick man, even then. He had fever
and was a ravin' lunatic at times, but at intervals he made out to
tell me suthin' of his story. Him and his partner, a fellow he called
Foxy Joe, was on their way to find a little island down ther river
where no white man but only one had been. This man was a friend of
Foxy Joe's and the two met up in Yuma. Foxy's friend had a lot to tell
him about a wonderful island some Injuns had told him about whar
there was some sort of mysterious mineral. By what Joe could make out
this mineral was nuthin' more nor less than radium."
"Radium!" exclaimed the boys.
"That's right," went on the miner. "Foxy's friend allowed that there
was cartloads of it lyin' loose thar 'cording to the description the
Injuns give him, and he showed Foxy a sample of the stuff. That sample
is in this little lead-wrapped bottle. It's wrapped in lead 'cos
otherwise it 'ud make sores on you when you carry it about. It's
workin', workin' all the time, frum what I kin make out.
"Well, 'cordin' ter ther way Blue Nose Sanchez tells it, Foxy and the
man who knew about the island and had a rough plan of it the Injuns
drew fer him, had a fight, and Foxy kills him, or thinks he has. Blue
Nose sees it and sees Foxy take the map and the little lead-wrapped
bottle off the body. He suspects somethin' and tells Foxy that he'll
give him up to the law if he don't let him in on it. So Foxy tells
him all about it and him and Sanchez, who was then a mule rustler,
agrees ter go partners and go git ther radium, or whatever it is.
"They builds this boat, the one that disappeared, and in order that
Foxy shouldn't play no tricks, that bein' his disposition, Sanchez
'lows he'll take both the sample and the map. Foxy sees no way out of
it but to give in and that's the way it's fixed.
"The boat is taken out of Yuma in sections and then put together in a
place whar nobody ain't likely to come nosin' around. Then they starts
out on what I guess was the most darn-fool enterprise any two locoed
fortune-hunters ever undertook. How it ended you know. They both got
fever, but Sanchez was the worst. He died that same evening, his
tumble in the water havin' made him worse. I buried him there as best
I could and then, as he had wished, I takes the sample and the map.
"'Some day,' he told me, just afore he closed his eyes for good,
'you'll be glad you saved me, even though it was too late.'
"Well, I beat it back and get out of the canyon more dead than alive
and finally make a small strike. I go to San Francisco with it and try
to git ther stuff analyzed, but everyone I tole about it laughed at me
and said I was crazy. So, thinks I, I'll come East. My money was about
all gone, so I shipped afore ther mast on a Cape Horn ship, and got
here.
"Now, you have me tale, old top," grinned the good-natured miner, and
added: "Well, has my toe-and-heeling been worth its salt?"
The professor nodded solemnly.
"What is it?" cried Jack, his heart beating with a strange, wild hope.
Tom and Zeb echoed Jack's eager question.
"My friends," declared the little man of science pompously, "we have
reason to believe that a wonderful discovery has been made, namely,
Z.2.X."