“You think that I, Natachee, am lying when I say that I know where there is gold beyond even a white man’s dream of wealth?”
“I know you are lying,” returned Hugh coldly. “Your talk of great wealth so near when I am finding so little is pure fiction. Because you know that I would almost give my soul to find a reasonably rich pocket, even, you have invented the story of this marvelously rich deposit, to torture me. If I believed it were true, I might, under the circumstances, feel worked up over it, but as it is you may as well save your breath. You are not worrying me in the least.”
“Good!” said Natachee, “the night is very dark. If the white man is not a coward he will come with me.”
“Go with you?” exclaimed the other. “Where?”
“You shall never know _where_,” replied the Indian. “But you shall see that I, Natachee, do not lie.”
From a peg in the wall he took a short rope and from the cupboard drawer a cloth and two candles. One of the candles he offered to Hugh with an insolent smile.
“If you are not afraid of the ghosts that, in the night and the darkness, haunt the Cañon of Gold.”
The amazed white man, snatching the candle, motioned impatiently for the Indian to proceed.
“The hope that brought the first white man to the Cañada del Oro is your only hope. You shall labor--you shall find your gold--if you can.”
From the door of the hut the Indian led the way into the darkness.
There was no friendly moon. The sky was overcast with lowering clouds that shut out the light of the stars. From the thick blackness of the cañon far below, the sullen murmur of the creek came up like the growl of angry voices from the depth of some black pit. The mountains seemed to breathe like gigantic monsters in a weird, dream world. The very air was heavy with the mystery of the night.
They had not gone a hundred yards before the white man lost all sense of direction. As they made their way down the steep side of the mountain he could scarcely distinguish the form of the Indian who was within reach of his hand.
Presently Natachee stopped, and, lighting the candle he carried, said:
“See, there is your pick and shovel. Are you satisfied that this is the place where you work?”
“Certainly, I can see that,” returned the other wonderingly.