“Well, the old man persisted in making a hero of me for my part in the incident and declared I had saved his life. Two or three days later, he came to the settlement and invited me to go with him to one of the principal native villages where he declared he wished to ‘make a big talk’ with me and intrust to me a great secret. I made up my mind, principally on account of his solemn manner, that he really had something more important on hand than a native celebration of his deliverance from the landslide and so I decided to go with him. It was nearly a week’s journey on foot and horseback to the west. When I arrived, I was invited to attend a council of four caciques, Waki, Orkeke, Cuastro, and Casimiro. They had met, the old chief explained to me, to consider a great difficulty and peril which threatened the tribe. They needed a white man’s advice and assistance. He had in his intercourse with me for several weeks been testing my knowledge, my judgment, and my good faith. The adventure of the avalanche had completed my establishment in his confidence. I did not feel particularly complimented by this expression of their esteem until they had described their problem. Then you will readily believe, I was dumfounded. “Casimiro as spokesman told the story. There existed, he said, at a secret spot in a spur of the Cordilleras within the tribe’s domain a vast store of native gold. ‘How much?’ I inquired in astonishment. ‘More, much more, than a thousand mules could carry,’ the chief declared solemnly. ‘But you mean ore, rock or sand with specks of gold in it,’ I said to him in Spanish, thinking I had misunderstood. ‘No,’ he replied, and going to a corner of the hut in which we were sitting, he produced presently a small bag of skin. He opened it and poured upon the floor in front of me a heap of yellow dust and nuggets--the purest virgin gold I had ever seen. ‘All like that,’ the old man remarked laconically. I was too amazed to speak. I put out my hand and took up a handful from the shining pile. There was no doubt about it. It was perfectly genuine--worth really four sovereigns an ounce, every speck of it. Then I looked from one to another of the four chiefs. They were watching me stoically. “‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked finally. “‘Take the gold away from our country,’ was Casimiro’s answer; whereat my surprise was so great that I must have shown signs of approaching idiocy. The four chiefs talked rapidly for a few moments in their own tongue, but I was too dazed to try to understand what they said. Involuntarily I was calculating roughly the amount of the treasure they had described. A mule-load I knew was about two hundredweight. Could there be two hundred thousand pounds, equivalent to twelve hundred thousand pounds sterling, or sixty millions of your American dollars, in this Patagonian treasure-bed? Presently Casimiro explained himself more clearly. What he said amounted to this: