“Don’t carry folks for nothing,” interrupted Zeb, “and nothing’s my capital right now.”

“You mean that you were walking from Boston?” asked the professor.

“That’s right,” was the reply.  “Landed there on ship from round the Horn last week.  Got paid off but some sneak thief in the boarding house I was stopping at got my roll.  So I had to hoof it.”

“But what did you want with me?” asked the professor.

“I wanted you ter tell me ef that thar stuff in the glass tube is worth anything or nothing,” was the reply.

“Why, do you know where there is more of it?” asked the professor, and the boys could see that he was oddly excited, although preserving an appearance of outward calm.

“Yes, siree,” was the emphatic reply.  “I know whar thar’s enough of it to load a freight train.”

“Shades of Huxley!” gasped the professor, actually turning pale.  “Do you mean that?”

“I sure do, Professor.  It’s all down on a map what Blue Nose Sanchez give me afore he passed in his checks.”

CHAPTER XV.

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.