"Is there a loose piece of rock up there?" Mac called presently. "If
there is, set it on the edge, in line with where this was."
I found a fragment about the size of my fist and set it on the rim of
the ledge. He squinted up at it a moment, then nodded, smiling.
"Come on down now, Sarge," he grinned; and, seating himself on a rock
with the carbine across his knees, he began to roll a cigarette, as if
the finding of Hank Rowan's gold-_cache_ were a thing of no importance
whatever.
"Well," I began, when I had negotiated that precarious succession of
knobs and notches and accumulated a fresh set of bruises, "why don't you
get busy? How much wiser are you now? Where's your gold-dust?"
He took a deliberate puff and squinted up at the ledge again. "I'm
sitting on it, as near as I can figure," he coolly asserted.
"Yes, you are," I fleered. "I'm from Missouri!"
"Oh, you're a doubting Thomas of the first water," he said. "Stand
behind me, you confounded unbeliever. Kink your back a little and look
over that stone you set for a mark. Do you see anything that catches
your attention?"
Getting in the position he suggested, I looked up. Away back in the days
before the white man was a power to be reckoned with in the Indian's
scheme of things, some warrior had stood upon that self-same ledge and
hacked out with a flint chisel what he and his fellows doubtless
considered a work of art.
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