Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/88

74 needn't be scientists, only looking for material to write a book. We can pack in a camera. You can be the official photographer, Healy, and I'll be the author and do the talking. We can pull it off and cover ourselves. We'll set up a permanent camp at the headwaters of the Tonto Fork and dismiss our guide once we are located."

"Anybody 'd think we were going to trail across Africa," objected Healy. "Why, we ain't got more 'n fifty miles, all told. " What's the use of spilling money for someone to dry-nurse us? We're not infants or tenderfeet."

"We don't know the first thing about desert travel," answered Stone. "We don't know two words of Apache or Zuni or Moqui, or whatever may be needed, among the three of us. We don't know how to talk sign language or how to handle Indians. I'd say we were very much tenderfeet. But of course we've got to find the right man."

At Globe they posed as exploring authors and photographers. Globe had seen others of their kind and passed no especial comment save to caution them against going too close to the reservation boundaries.

"It's a hell of a country you're goin' into," frankly stated a miner in the Matrix Hotel lobby. "I went up there once looking for turquoise and I didn't find it. Hell's backyard, with the gate open. And Apaches prowling round sore as a kicked dorg at any one they think is butting in on their reservation. You can't teach them any notion of surveying any more 'n