“Then the night’s still young, boys,” exclaimed Tom Baker, hilariously. “Get the brew, Buck. The empty bottles will keep the tally. Come on, lieutenant, drain your glass. No heel taps in this crowd.” They had started their conversation in low tones so as not to disturb the slumbers of Pierre Luzon. But this precaution, or act of delicate consideration, had been long since forgotten. They were talking loud now, and often all together, and when Buck Ashley had returned from yet another pilgrimage to the store, none heard or noticed the door of the bedroom being cautiously pushed open by just the fraction of an inch. All four chairs had been again drawn around the cheerful log fire. “You were talking, Tom, of buying out Ben Thurston,” remarked Jack Rover. “Then you haven’t heard there’s an option been given to a Los Angeles syndicate? Guess mebbe Ben Thurston won’t be the owner of the big rancho very much longer.” “And a good job, too,” replied the sheriff, as he helped himself to yet another drink. Buck Ashley shook his head incredulously. “Oh, lots of fellers have paid down money for an option, as they call it, on the Thurston property, and finally when the rub came they didn’t come across and live up to their bargain, and so they just naturally lost their option money.” “I was talking to a geologist,” intervened Munson, in whose mind the oil question seemed to be still uppermost, “and he says there is every indication that the Midway Oil fields, a few miles north, are not one whit better than wells that can be opened up right here.” “But what’s the use,” said Tom Baker, “of all the oil fields in California to us fellers if we are about to be let into the secret door of a big cavern where they’ve got twelve or fifteen millions of twenty-dollar gold pieces stacked up, jest awaitin’ for us to take ‘em.” The whisky was beginning to do its work; he had already forgotten his aspirations of being an oil king. “That’s right,” said Jack Rover, “and don’t forget, while you’re counting them twenty-dollar gold pieces, that Pierre Luzon has promised to show us the shallow riffle in the mountain stream where Guadalupe gets all that placer gold.” In the cowboy’s case the alcohol was making only still more fixed the one fixed idea in his brain. “Damn this store business anyway,” said Buck Ashley, inconsequentially returning to the theme that appealed to him most directly. “Do you ‘spose I’m goin’ to work my fingers off tying up groceries after we find old Murietta’s money and the White Wolf’s treasure? Not by one hell of a sight, if I know myself, and I ‘low as how I do.” And at the slightly opened bedroom door old Pierre, Luzon whom they all thought to be fast asleep, was listening to every word! “But there is one thing,” cried Tom Baker, striking the table fiercely as he set down his glass, “I want you fellers to get next to yourselves now and make up your mind to.”