Two days later the lad was able to sit up in bed and to enter upon a discussion as to the future with Tom and the miner. It was begun by the latter.
"I suppose you will be taking the first ship back as soon as you are strong enough?" he said.
"I don't know, Dave; now I am here I should certainly like a run ashore for a few weeks and to see something of the country. We have got twenty pounds between us; that will last for some time. I should think we could get a passage back without having to pay on this side for it, and if there was any difficulty about it, we could work our way back; but Tom agrees with me, we should like to see something of the country first.
"I suppose in another fortnight I shall be all right again; but there is the doctor to pay. I don't know what their charges are here, but I expect his bill will be a pretty long one. You had better tell him to-day that we have not got a great deal of cash between us, and that as I only want building up now, he need not come again."
"Don't you trouble yourself about that," Dave growled. "You don't suppose that when you have got yourself cut and sliced about in helping me you are going to have any trouble about doctors? We have got a tidy lot at present amongst us, and what is ours is yourn. We were going to set off among the hills a day or two after the time we had that trouble; only, of course, that stopped it all."
"Please don't stop on my account," Dick said. "I shall get on very well now, and I was saying to Tom, as soon as I can get about we will go off somewhere among the hills; for one might just as well be lying in an oven as here. If you will tell us where you and your mates are working, we might find our way there, and get a job. We are both pretty strong, you know—that is to say, when we are well—and we have often said that we should like to try our luck gold-mining."
"We aint agoing till you are strong enough to get about," Dave said; "so it is no use saying any more about that. Then, if you want to do some mining, we will put you in the way of it; but we are going on a long expedition, which may last months, and from which, as like as not, we shall never come back again. However, we can easy enough take you with us for a bit and drop you at one of the mining camps, and stop there with you till you get accustomed to it, or work for a few months with you if you like. Time is not of much consequence to us."
"That is awfully good of you, Dave," Tom said, "but as you have lost more than a fortnight at present, and I suppose it will be another fortnight before Dick is strong enough to travel, it isn't fair on you; and perhaps you might be able to introduce us to some men going up to the hills—that is, if you think that we could not go with you on this expedition you talk of."
"That won't be a job for young hands," Dave said. "It will be a mighty long journey over a terrible rough country, where one's life will be always in one's hands, where one's eyes will always be on the lookout for an enemy, and one will know that any moment, night or day, one may hear the war yell of the Indians. We are going into the heart of Arizona, to places where not half-a-dozen white men, even counting Mexicans as white men, have ever set foot; at least, where not half-a-dozen have ever come back alive from, though maybe there are hundreds who have tried."
"Then I suppose you are going to look for some very rich mine, Dave?"
"That is so; I will tell you how it came about, and queerly enough, it wur pretty well the same way as your friend and me came together. My mates and me were coming down from the hills when we heard a shot fired in a wood ahead of us. It wasn't none of our business, but we went on at a trot, thinking as how some white men had been attacked by greasers."
"What are greasers?" Tom asked.
Dave laughed.
"A greaser is just a Mexican. Why they call them so I don't know; but that has been their name always as long as I came in the country. Well, we ran down and came sudden upon two greasers who were kneeling by a man lying in the road, and seemed to be searching his pockets. We let fly with our Colts; one of them was knocked over, and the other bolted. Then we went to look at the man in the road; he wur a greaser too. He had been shot dead. 'I wonder what they shot him for?' says I. 'Maybe it is a private quarrel; maybe he had struck it rich, and has got a lot of gold in his belt. We may as well look; it is no use leaving it for that skunk that bolted to come back for.' He had got about twenty ounces in his belt, and we shifted it into our bag, and were just going on when 'Zekel—that is one of my mates—said, 'I know this cuss, Dave; it's the chap that lived in that village close to where we were working six months ago; they said he had been fossicking all over Arizona, and that he was the only one who ever came back out of a party who went to locate a wonderful rich spot it was said he knew of.
"'He tried over and over again to get up another party, but no one would try after that first failure. We may just as well search him all over; it may be he has got a plan of the place somewhere about him, and it is like enough those fellows have killed him on the chance of finding it.'
"So we searched him pretty thorough, and at last we found a paper sewn up in the collar of his jacket. Sure enough it was a plan. We did not examine it then, for someone might have come along, and we might have been accused of the chap's murder; so I shoved it into the inside pocket of my shirt, and we went on. We looked at it that night; there was several marks on it and names, one of which we had heard of, though we had never been so far in the Indian country. Well, as you may guess, we had some big talks over it, and at last we reckoned we would have a try to find it.
"We had been lucky, and had struck it rich at the last place we had been at, and we agreed, instead of spending our money in a spree or at the monte tables, we would fit out an expedition and try it. Now I believe that attack was made on me to try and get that piece of paper. The chap who bolted may like enough have hid himself and watched us, and may have seen us find it and me take charge of it. We thought more than once since we came down here that we were being dogged by a greaser, but we never thought about the paper. That evening I had been out by myself, which I did not often do, for we in general went about together, and was going back along that street, and was pretty nigh home, when someone said in Spanish, 'That is the fellow,' and then five men jumped out with knives in their hands. I had just time to whip out my six-shooter and fire once. One fellow went down, but at the same moment I got a clip across my wrist with a knife, and down went the pistol. Then I got a slice across the head, and another on the shoulder, and down I went. Two of them threw themselves on me, and I shammed dead, knowing that if I moved it was all over with me. One of them shoved his hand in my trousers pockets, and the other tore my shirt open. I heard a sudden row, a blow, and the fall of a body; then one of them came tumbling down on the top of us and knocked the two fellows over, then they jumped up, and I heard your pistol crack twice and two falls, and as I got up on to my feet to lend a hand I saw one of the fellows bolting down the street, running off in another direction. That was the one, I think, that came down on the top of us.
"I have been wondering since then how it was that that fellow fell, for you did not fire till they jumped up."
Dick explained that he had felled one with a blow from the stick, and not having time to strike with it again, had sent the second staggering over the group with a blow of his fist; "those are the two that got away, I expect," he said.
"I expect so; there were four bodies on the ground—yours, the two fellows you shot, and the one I wiped out to begin with."
"Has there been any row about it?" Dick asked.
"No; they take these things quietly. If it had been one of my mates and me who had killed three Mexicans, our story that we had been attacked might not have been believed, but as it was certain a young ship's officer would not have joined me in falling foul of three natives, they just took and buried them, and there was an end of it."