“I’m not so sure about that. The map shows our valley lying on the other side of this southern mountain range. The route we took, coming out, was along two sides of a triangle, following the streams--which is the long way around. I’m wondering if we couldn’t cut straight across and save a lot of time. We’ve climbed worse mountains than this one looks to be. And there’s another thing: we can take the water trail up this gulch for a starter, and the chances are that we’d lose the hue and cry that’s following us--lose it permanently. What do you say?” “I’m good for a try at it, if you are,” was the prompt reply; and so, without more ado, the route was changed. For the first half-mile or so through the windings of the gulch they were able to hide their tracks in the brook bed, but the farther they went, the rougher the way became, until finally they had to drag the horses and pack animals up out of the ravine and take to the mountain slopes, zigzagging their way upward as best they could through the primeval forest. Luckily, though there were craggy steeps to be climbed with shortened breath, perilous slides to be avoided, and canyon-like gulches to be headed at the price of long detours, they encountered no impassable obstacles, and evening found them far up in the forest blanketing of the higher slopes, with still some little picking of grass for the stock and with plenty of dry wood for the camp fire which they heaped high in the comforting assurance that its blaze would not now betray them. It was after they had cooked and eaten their first hearty meal of the toilsome day, and had stretched themselves luxuriously before the fire for the evening tobacco-burning, that Bromley said: “How about it, Philip?--are you getting a bit used to the millionaire idea by this time?” Philip shook his head slowly. “No, Harry; I can’t fully realize it yet. For a little while after I saw the figures of those assays I thought I could. But now it seems more like an opium dream. It doesn’t seem decently credible that after only a short summer’s knocking about in these hills, two raw green-horns like ourselves could stumble upon something that may change the entire scheme of things for both of us for the remainder of our lives. It’s fairly grotesque, when you come to think of it.” “Well, I guess it isn’t a dream, at any rate. Mr. Drew gave me a good bit of his time day before yesterday; went with me to the land office, and afterward helped me in the horse market where I bought the extra burro. He asked a lot of questions; about the width of the vein, how far we had traced it, and how fair or unfair we’d been to ourselves in picking the samples; and after I had answered him as well as I could, he said, in effect, that we had the world by the neck, or we would have, if the ‘Little Jean’ pans out anywhere near as good as it promises to.”