“You want to remember that our location notice will be running out pretty soon.”

“We’ll have to risk it.  Not so much of a risk, either.  Cobre is the last outpost of civilization.  South of here, in the whole strip from Comobabi to the Colorado River, there’s not twenty men, all told, between here and the Mexican border—­except yonder deluded wretches in the Gavilan; and none beyond the border for a hundred miles.”

“It is certainly one big lonesome needle-in-the-haystack proposition—­and no one has any idea where our find is, not within three days’ ride.  But what puzzles me is this:  If Zurich really got wise to our copper, he’d know at once that it was a big thing, if there was any amount of it.  Then why didn’t he keep it private and confidential?  Why tip it off to the G.P.?  I have always understood that in robbery and murder, one is assisted only by intimate friends.  What is the large idea?”

“That, I take it,” laughed Pete, “is, in some part, an acknowledgment that it doesn’t take many like you and me to make a dozen.  You’ve made one or two breaks and got away with ’em, the last year or two, that has got ’em guessing; and I’m well and loudly known myself.  There is a wise old saying that it’s no use sending a boy to mill.  They figure on that, likely; they wanted to be safe and sanitary.  They sized it up that to dispatch only two or three men to adjust such an affair with us would be in no way respectful or segacious.

“Also, in a gang of crooks like that, every one is always pullin’ for his buddy.  That accounts for part of the crowd—­prudence and a far-reaching spirit of brotherly love.  For the rest, when the first ten or six made packs and started, they was worked up and oozing excitement at every pore.  Then some of the old prospectors got a hunch there was something doing; so they just naturally up stakes and tagged along.  Always doing that, old miner is.  That’s what makes the rushes and stampedes you hear about.”

“Then we’re to do nothing just now but to shun mind-readers, write no letters, and not talk in our sleep?”

“Just so,” agreed Pete.  “If my saddle could talk, I’d burn it.  That’s our best lay.  We’ll tire ’em out.  The most weariest thing in the world is to hunt for a man that isn’t there; the next worst is to watch a man that has nothing to conceal.  And our little old million-dollar-a-rod hill is the unlikeliest place to look for a mine I ever did see.  Just plain dirt and sand.  No indications; just a plain freak.  I’d sooner take a chance in the pasture lot behind pa’s red barn—­any one would.  We covered up all the scratchin’ we did and the wind has done the rest.  Here—­you was to do the talkin’.  Go on.”

“What we really need,” declared Mitchell, “is an army—­enough absolutely trustworthy and reliable men to overmatch any interference.”