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Staples drew back with a flushed face, but lips that writhed in a pained and still persistent eagerness. “But, Johnny, at least tell us where–wh–wow–wow.”

I am obliged to admit that these undignified accents came from Mr. Staples’ own lips, and were due to the sudden pressure of Mr. Medliker’s arm around his throat. The teamster was irascible and prompt through much mule-driving, and his arm was, from the same reason, strong and sinewy. Mr. Staples felt himself garroted and dragged from the room, and only came to under the stars outside, with the hoarse voice of Mr. Medliker in his ears:–

“You’re a minister of the gospel, I know, but ef ye say another word to my Johnny, I’ll knock the gospel stuffin’ out of ye. Ye hear me! I’VE DRIVEN MULES AFORE!”

He then strode back into the room. “Ye needn’t answer, Johnny, he’s gone.”

But so, too, had Johnny, for he never answered the question in this world, nor, please God, was he required to in the next. He lay still and dead. The community was scandalized the next day when Mr. Medliker sent for a minister from Sacramento to officiate at his child’s funeral, in place of Mr. Staples, and then the subject was dropped.

*****

But the influence of Johnny’s hidden treasure still remained as a superstition in the locality. Prospecting parties were continually made up to discover the unknown claim, but always from evidence and data altogether apocryphal. It was even alleged that a miner had one night seen the little figures of Johnny and Florry walking over the hilltop, hand in hand, but that they had vanished among the stars at the very moment he thought he had discovered their secret. And then it was forgotten; the prosperous Mr. Medliker, now the proprietor of a stage-coach route, moved away to Sacramento; Medliker’s Ranch became a station for changing horses, and, as the new railway in time superseded even that, sank into a blacksmith’s shop on the outskirts of the new town of Burnt Spring. And then one day, six years after, news fell as a bolt from the blue!

It was thus recorded in the county paper: “A piece of rare good fortune, involving, it is said, the development of a lead of extraordinary value, has lately fallen to the lot of Mr. John Silsbee, the popular blacksmith, on the site of the old Medliker Ranch. In clearing out the failing water-course known as Burnt Spring, Mr. Silsbee came upon a rich ledge or pocket at the actual source of the spring,–a fissure in the ground a few rods from the road. The present yield has been estimated to be from eight to ten thousand dollars. But the event is considered as one of the most remarkable instances of the vagaries of ‘prospecting’ ever known, as this valuable ‘pot-hole’ existed undisturbed for EIGHT YEARS not FIFTY YARDS from the old cabin that was in former times the residence of J. Medliker, Esq., and the station of the Pioneer Stage Company, and was utterly unknown and unsuspected by the previous inhabitants! Verily truth is stranger than fiction!”