It seemed to Jim as if the small house brightened in appearance at the return of its soul; his heart in turn rose with a home feeling; his belief in the treasure which lay where the new channel cut across the old wash--that treasure which would make the world so different--came back to him like a renewed love. His hands ached for a grip on pick and shovel. His strong muscles twitched with eagerness to be at work again. Suddenly a ponderous and gross sound, out of all proportion to the size of its source, smashed the mountain silence into slivers. It was the burro's greeting to his companions, and the echoes fluttered it from cliff to cliff until it faded into the merest tint. "Kerissmus! How many of dem is dere?" asked Ches, astonished at the demonstration. At that instant the herd welcomed the returned one. The canyon was full of brays; colliding, rising, falling and swelling in a tumult of noise against which the dreadful shouting of the gods at the fall of Troy would have seemed as the wail of a kitten. "Say, I don't like dat!" said Ches. "What's loose?" Jim had watched the growing astonishment of the boy's face with suppressed emotion, but now he hugged himself and uproariously laughed his laugh out. "That, Ches," he replied, "is a matter of fifteen or twenty donkeys and an echo--did you think it was the end of the world?" "I t'ought it was gittin' on well past der middle, all right," retorted Ches. "What 'ud yer expeck of a man dat never heerd der like before?" "I knew what to expect. I never heard them either till I came out here. I was digging a hole up the side of that hill yonder, and had begun to feel that there was something behind me, and that it was almost time to go home, when old Jack, who has the voice of his family, poured out his soul about twenty rods away. I was half way home, Ches, before I got sand enough to go back and investigate. But now listen, and you'll hear something prettier than that." He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a bugle call. "I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up in the morning," sounded Jim. And back came the pretty reveille in a fabric of music, indescribably interwoven; sharp and staccato from the neighboring walls; the lightest of whispers from the distance, turning and twisting upon itself and starting afresh when all seemed still. "Say, dat _is_ prutty!" said Ches enthusiastically. "Hit her again!" "Young man, you can come up here whenever you feel like it in the future, but as for now, I'm for home and grub." "Dat ain't so bad, neither. Der animile's jumped me up an' down till I cud hold more'n a man. Dis spook's hang-out business won't quit, will it?" "No, sir; that's a fixture. Hang on tight now, and I'll race you to the cabin--one, two, three!" and away sprinted Jim down the hill trail, the burro lumbering after. "No fair! No fair!" yelled Ches. "Yer've got me skate doped! T'row us a tow!"