"We sure will," confirmed Harry. "We wrote that we were rich with a gold mine, and told your father the hundred dollars would be waiting here for him, and a lot more besides! Huh!" "They think we're rolling in wealth," asserted Terry. "Now they'll laugh." "No, I don't believe they'll laugh," said Harry. "We did make a long brag, though. But chances are they didn't get that letter before they started. We'll write them, to Denver, and just say we're doing well. Then they'll know where we are." "George'll laugh," insisted Terry. "He'll laugh when he finds you're cooking pies and I'm working by the day for Pat Casey! I told him I'd have a claim ready for him, so he could start in digging." "Ha, ha!" cheered Harry. "Well, we've got the claims, haven't we? And he can dig all he wants to. We're doing the best _we_ can. You're earning a dollar and a half a day, and I'm the champion cook of the diggin's--I sold three pies and a batch of biscuits today, all for dust." "How much've we got in our oyster-can, I wonder?" "Quite a lot, after you've been paid off," alleged Harry, cheerfully. "But trouble is, flour and apples and soda and salt cost so plaguey much--and we have to eat, ourselves. So that means coffee and meat and--pshaw! But not a stitch of clothes do we buy, mind you, till we're square with Father Richards." "Don't believe Dad'll need the hundred dollars," declared Terry. "Maybe he will and maybe he won't," answered Harry. "But we let on we had a bonanza, and now we've got to make good. That's the joke." "Shucks!" bemoaned Terry. "We can't go down to Denver or Auraria in these rigs, to meet real folks. We look like--like--I don't know what. Your pants are split clear across the knee." "No worse split than yours," retorted Harry. "And my best boot is better than your best one!" "We'll have to stay out of sight in the mountains," asserted Terry, "till we get enough dust to buy clothes with." "Well," said Harry, "here's where we belong. We're all right for Gregory Gulch--and we don't know when to meet the folks, anyway. By the time they turn up we may have our can heaping full from my pies and your wages, or we may be regularly sluicing out the gold from the Golden Prize and the True Blue, and go down to Denver in time to put on broadcloth and brand new boots!" "If we only had water," sighed Terry. "That's the one thing that keeps us from being millionaires," sighed Harry. "And it's one thing or another with most people--or else we'd all be millionaires. Counting up beforehand is the easiest part of getting rich." "Just the same, I know this much," blurted Terry. "Some day all of a sudden George Stanton will come straight into this gulch, with his pick and spade, looking for the gold that he'll say we promised him." "Then we'll put him to work baking, or digging with you and Pat," laughed Harry.