“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.