“You’re right, Johnny.” Rawley grinned at him ruefully. “If we’ve had any dream of being millionaires, we may as well forget it. Grandfather gave us the straight dope, and you found the cleft in the rocks. It isn’t Grandfather’s fault that the millions have moved on. So that’s all of that, and the next thing is something else.” “The next thing is what is given us to do,” said Johnny Buffalo solemnly. “We will do our duty, whatever that may be. Now I have no more searching for my sergeant’s gold. I shall live here until it is time to go. I do not think it will be long.” Rawley looked at him anxiously, but he could not bring himself to speak what was in his mind. Johnny Buffalo would not understand that to the young death is a dreadful thing, to be shunned and never thought of voluntarily,--an ogre that may snatch one away from the joys of living. After all, he thought, Johnny Buffalo had outlived his love of life. No one needed him. He had only to wait. Rawley wished that he could be with him longer and oftener, but that was not possible unless he were willing to sacrifice the work he loved. Even if he could bring himself to that, Johnny Buffalo would not permit it. It would break his heart to feel that he had hindered his sergeant’s grandson. “Your work,” said Johnny Buffalo, almost as if he had been reading Rawley’s thoughts, “is better than the gold. A man is great within himself, or he is nothing. The full pocket makes the empty head. It is greater fortune that you have honor and youth and work to perform. So my sergeant would tell you.” “You’re right, Johnny,” Rawley assented again. “If we’d found a ton of gold I think I’d have gone on with my work just the same. A man my age can’t stop working for the sake of seeing how fast he can spend money. I couldn’t, anyway.” “Then you do not need the gold. You can earn what you need and have the pleasure twice: in the getting and in the spending. So you have not lost.” “We’re a great pair of philosophers,” Rawley laughed, “or else we are eating sour grapes. Blamed if I know, sometimes, just where the difference lies. Or perhaps there isn’t any, and crying sour grapes is true philosophy, after all.” Peter and Nevada, coming up the path, diverted the talk to lighter channels. Nevada, spying the gold, exclaimed over the odd pieces and took them in her cupped palm to admire each specimen by itself. “They are yours, save this one which I shall keep,” said Johnny Buffalo unexpectedly. “Rawley will not take them. I do not need gold. I have three friends and the spirit of my sergeant, who waits for me. I am rich. They are yours. Put them on a chain and hang them around your neck while yet it is white and round.” Nevada looked at him a full fifteen seconds before she moved. Then she rose and kissed Johnny Buffalo on the withered cheek nearest her. “To know a man like you is a privilege,” she said simply. “I shall keep the nuggets to remind me that not all men worship gold.”