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"No sabe," California John summed up their investigations. "There's the man's track leadin' his hoss. The hoss had on new shoes, and the robber did his own shoeing. So we ain't got any blacksmiths to help us." "How do you know he shod the horse himself?" asked Jimmy Gaynes. "Shoes just alike on front and back feet. Shows he must just have tacked on ready-made shoes.
"I'm glad they didn't," said Tibbetts. "That agent would have killed 'em shore!" They called out the Gaynes brothers and broke the news. For once the jovial youngsters had no joke to make. "This is getting serious," said Jimmy, seriously. "We can't afford to lose that much." George whistled dolefully, and went into the corral for the mules. The party toiled up the mountain.
A huge horseshoe was tacked over the door of the stamp-mill. Jimmy Gaynes always spat over his right shoulder before doing a day's work. They never walked under the short ladders leading to the hoppers. Neither would they permit visitors to their shafts. To California John and his friend Tibbetts they interposed scandalized objections.
To the older men of the camp it seemed a shame, for the newcomers were nice, fresh-cheeked, clear-eyed lads to whom everything was new and strange and wonderful, their enthusiasm was contagious, and their cheerful command of vernacular exceedingly heart-warming. California John, then a man in his forties, tried to head off the deal. "Look here, son," said he to Gaynes. "Don't do it.
Not down the mountain from above, for the cliff rose sheer for at least three hundred feet. Jimmy Gaynes, following unconsciously the general train of conjecture, craned his neck over the edge of the road. The broken jagged rock and shale dropped off an hundred feet to a tangle of manzanita and snowbrush. California John looked over, too.
Nevertheless the Babes, as the Gaynes brothers were speedily nicknamed, paid over their good thousand for Barney's worthless prospect with the imposing but ridiculous stamp-mill. There they set cheerfully to work. After a week's desperate and clanking experiment they got the machinery under way and began to run rock through the crushers. "It ain't even ore!" expostulated California John.
It never reached the proportions of the Clarice, but turned out an increasing value of dust at each clean-up. The Gaynes boys two years before had been in debt for their groceries. Now they were said to have shipped out something like three or four hundred thousand dollars' worth of gold.
And then Jimmy Gaynes rose up from behind that rock and laughed at me. "'The joke's on me! said I, and reached down for my gun. "'Better leave that! said Jimmy pretty sharp. I know that tone of voice, so I straightened up again. "'Well, Jimmy, said I, 'she lays if you say so. But where'd you come from: and what for do you turn road agent and hold up your old friends?
But he brooded much, seeking a plausible theory that would not force him back on the powers of darkness. This he did not find. Nor did any other man. It remained a mystery, a single bizarre anomaly in the life of the camp. For some time thereafter the express went heavily guarded. The road was patrolled. Jimmy or George Gaynes in person accompanied each shipment of dust.
"What kind of rock did you find it in?" demanded Tibbetts, after he had recovered his breath from the youngsters' enthusiastic man-handling. "Oh, a kind of red, pasty-looking rock," said they. "Show us," demanded the miners. "What?" cried Jimmy, astounded, "and give Old Man Luck the backhand slap just when he's decided to buy a corner lot in the Gaynes Addition? Not on your saccharine existence!"
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