Abington was walking around the roomy chamber, flicking this thing and that thing with a glance, overlooking nothing. He stooped over a pile of whitish rock stained thickly with great blobs of bright yellow, selected a lump and looked up, seeking an opening where the strongest light fell through. He went over and stood under the light, turning the rock this way and that while he examined it through a miner’s glass. “So this is his millions in carnetite!” he said contemptuously at last, tossing the sample to Bill, who caught it dexterously as a catcher cups palms for a ball. “More than one poor devil has been fooled by limonite. That’s what this is, if I am not badly mistaken, a yellow ocher, resembling carnetite. There’s your revenge. Bill. Go tell him his millions in carnetite are just a dream. Tell him it’s limonite. If he’s greedy as you say, that will be punishment enough.” “Not when he thinks he’s dying,” Bill grumbled. “He won’t give a darn. What’s he flopping around like that for?” he asked sharply. “Something bite him, do you s’pose? If it did, it’ll die,” he went on sententiously. * * * * * Abington ran over to where Jack Huntley lay on the ground. He could do nothing, with the primitive means at hand. Huntley had indeed been bitten--by death. Whether the wound had been more serious than Abington diagnosed it, or whether he had injured himself in crawling to the cave, they could not of course do more than guess. Within half an hour Jack Huntley lay dead on the floor of the cave. “This means that I must go in and have a talk with the sheriff,” Abington observed. “A mere formality, but one I prefer not to neglect. Want to come along, Bill? I’ll pay them for the car, far as that goes.” “Yeah, I guess maybe I better go in and have it over with. I’ll pay you back in work, professor, if you’ll go ahead and settle for that darn car I wrecked. But don’t let ’em stick you on the price of it. It wasn’t worth more’n two or three hundred dollars.” “I’m a fair judge of cars,” Abington remarked. “It will be all right, Bill.” “Yeah. And when we come back in here with a fresh outfit, professor, we better bring along a couple of good muckers and some powder. I believe I can maybe locate the hole into that cave, if I can take my time and have some help. Or maybe we can find another way in there. We sure oughta come fixed to spend the whole winter in here. I found a lot more carvings than I’d ever saw before.” Abington laughed to himself, and clapped a hand down on Bill’s shoulder. “Bill, my lad, that’s the true scientific spirit! You’ll be an Adam chaser as long as you live, now you’ve started.” “Yeah,” said Bill, staring around him at the encircling red hills. “They’re in here somewhere, professor. Eight feet tall and big accordin’. No foolin’. I seen ’em myself. Well, let’s bury the dead and get ready and beat it. We want to get back in here while the good weather holds.”