The Peril Finders Part 10

"Then why not try and find the spot?" cried Chris. "It must be somewhere south."

"Yes," cried Ned. "Oh, father, don't let's give up without a good try to find it."

The doctor laughed at the boy's eagerness.

"Somewhere due south," he said; "a nice vague direction. Somewhere due south may mean anywhere between here and Cape Horn."

"No, no, father," cried Chris; "not so far as that. I haven't forgotten all my geography since I've been here, and I know that there are plenty of desert regions such as that poor fellow may have been wandering in between here and Panama."

"Hear, hear!" cried Griggs. "But give us one or two, squire."

Chris grew red and uncomfortable, but he caught his father's eye looking keenly at him, and he spoke out.

"I don't know about being exactly south," he said. "Perhaps some of the places lie east; but the old man might have been wandering in the mountainous parts of Colorado or Lower California, or--or--"

"New Mexico," whispered Ned.

"Yes, New Mexico, or California, or perhaps have got to Mexico itself."

"Well done, our side!" cried Griggs, thumping the table. "Three cheers for our own private professor of geography. To be sure, there's desert land in all those places, as I've learned myself from fellows who have been there. But what's Arizona done to be left out in the cold?"

"In the sun, you mean," cried Chris eagerly. "That's the hottest and dryest place of all of them."

"To be sure," said the doctor--"the arid zone."

"Dessay it's true," said Griggs. "I vote we go and see."

"Why not Lower California, or one of the other States?" said the doctor dryly.

"To be sure, why not?" said Griggs, and the boys, who smelt change in the air, thumped the table.

"Quiet, quiet, boys!" said the doctor sternly. "I'm afraid, neighbour Griggs, that your plantation would suffer a good deal during your absence on such a wild-goose chase."

"What! My plantation suffer?" cried Griggs, chuckling. "Oh, come, that's too good a joke, doctor! Suffer? Have you been round it lately?"

"Not for a year past," was the reply. "I've been too busy slaving over our own."

"Then you don't know. Why, my good neighbour, it's in nearly as bad a condition as that poor old fellow we have just buried."

"Have you tried to sell it to some immigrant?"

"Have I tried to swindle some poor fellow just come into the country?"

cried Griggs sharply. "No, I haven't. I don't set up for being much of a citizen, but, 'pon my word, doctor, I wouldn't be such a brute as to even give it to a man on condition that he would live there and farm it.

Your joint plantation here is bad enough, but my bit's ten times worse."

"I join issue there," cried Wilton sharply; "it can't be."

"Oh, can't it!" cried the American. "You don't know what it's took out of me. Why, I'd have pitched the whole thing up a couple of years ago if it hadn't been for you three here."

"What had we to do with it?" said Bourne sharply.

"Everything. I used to see you folk and these boys plodding along, working like n.i.g.g.e.rs, no matter how your crops turned out, and waiting patiently for better times to come."

"Well, what of that?" said Wilton. "Of course we wanted to get on."

"So did I, squire, and seeing you all keep at it so when I wanted to chuck up, I pitched into myself and called him--this chap, 'Thaniel Griggs, you know--all the idle, lazy scallywags and loafers I could think of, and made him--'Thaniel, you know--so ashamed of himself that he worked harder than ever. 'They've all cut their eye-teeth, Griggy, my boy,' I said, 'and they wouldn't keep on if there wasn't some good to come out of it by and by,' and after that I worked away. But now you all talk of giving up, and say you've proved that there's no good in the place, what's the use of my n.i.g.g.e.ring away by myself?"

"You'd sooner go on such a wild, harum-scarum search as this, eh?" said the doctor, looking at the tall, sun-burnt man grimly.

"To be sure I would. There'd be some fun and adventure in it."

"And risk."

"Well, yes, neighbour; I don't expect it would be all honey. There'd be some mustard and cayenne in it too."

"And danger of wasting your life as that poor fellow yonder did his."

"Some," said the American coolly. "You can't make fortunes without a bit of a fight. I came here to this place to make mine, but there's no stuff here to make it of. If we should find the gold-hills now, that would be something like. The fortune's already made. All it wants is for us to go and pack it up and bring it away."

"To find it first," said Ned's father bitterly.

"Nay, it's already found, parson. The poor old boy found it, and gave the job over to the doctor here, along with those t.i.tle-deeds."

"Which don't say where the land lies."

"Oh, never mind that. I boggled about it at first, and thought it was a regular blind lead. But I don't now. Amurrykee isn't such a big place as all that comes to. There's the gold somewhere, and we've got some sort of a guide as well as the right to it. We're none of us so old that we can't afford to spend a few years, if it's necessary, in hunting through first one desert and then another. Can't you see what a chance we shall have?"

"I must confess I do not," said the doctor.

"Well, I do, sir. We shall have those places all to ourselves.

There'll be no one to complain of our making footmarks over their gardens and strawberry-patches."

"What about the Indians, Mr Griggs?" asked Bourne.

"The Injun? Yes, there's the Injun, but we shouldn't go as one. We should be half-a-dozen, and if the 'foresaid Injun takes my advice he'll stop at home and leave me alone. I ain't got more pluck in me than most fellows have, but though I called 'Thaniel Griggs all the lazy c.o.o.ns I could lay my tongue to, I've a great respect for that young man.

Selfish or not, I like him better than any fellow in this country, and I should no more mind drawing a straight bead on the savage who tried to kill him than I should mind putting my heel on a sleeping rattler's head while I drew my knife and 'capitated him. There, now."

"Self-preservation's the first law of nature, friend Griggs," said Wilton.

"Is it, now?" replied the American. "Then all I can say is that number two and all the rest of her laws have got to be very good ones if they come up to number first, sir. Oh, I shouldn't stop for no Injuns if I made up my mind to go, sirree. I should chance that, practise up my shooting, and never go a step without having my rifle charged in both barrels."

"But can't you see that the chances are very much against any one finding this place?"

"No, sir. It'll be a tight job, no doubt; but what one man could do, going without the slightest idee where to go nor what there was to find, surely half-a-dozen of us, counting the young nippers in, could do, knowing that the gold's there waiting for us, and that we've only got to find the right spot."

"Only!" said Bourne sadly.

"Yes, sir, only. There, if I talk much more I shall want to go back home to see if there is one ripe orange on my plantation that I can suck. So I'll just put my opinions down straight. Those is them--I say, Squire Ned, that's bad grammar, ain't it?"