Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/211

Rh ing. Healy, with his wounded arm, stayed on the ground, watching them eagerly. Once on the top, they placed the compass and Harvey set his beside it. Three pairs of eyes followed the trend of the compass points. Then Stone and Harvey straightened up in bitter disappointment. For where they looked for a gap in the wall the cliffs were the most solid, an unbroken escarpment from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet high, taking in a segment that ranged from northwest to southwest, an arc range of easily ninety degrees, a quarter of the entire amphitheatre. Even allowing for differences in compass, for all reasonable variation, there was nothing but blank wall facing them. But Larkin chuckled.

"You didn't hexpect to find hit so heasy as hall that, did yer?" he asked. "'Ealey knows it hain't so simple. Hold Lyman was a fox. Look right where my compass marks the heighty degrees west-of-north. The rock's hall twisted, hain't it? See that yellow dirt that runs all the walls 'cept right there, where it's mixed up with a lot of colours, hall goin' criss-cross? That's the hopening of the placer-creek. But a hearthquake filled it up. Lyman savvied it from the look of the rock. 'Appened way back, 'e said. You'll find your placer on the mesa, back of where hit's filled in."

Harvey nodded comprehension and Stone read the meaning of the jumbled strata that had fallen against each other and wedged in the original mouth of the side ravine. It was a well-guarded secret.

They slid and jumped to the ground and all four