Mackenzie nodded. "Yes, Dave took her with him when he lit out
across the line for Mexico"
But I'll have to go back to something that happened earlier.
About three months before this time Dave and me were riding
through a cut in the Sierra Diablo Mountains, when we came on a
Mexican who had been wounded by the Apaches. I reckon we had come
along just in time to scare them off before they finished him. We
did our best for him, but he died in about two hours. Before
dying, he made us a present of a map we found in his breast
pocket. It showed the location of a very rich mine he had found,
and as he had no near kin he turned it over to us to do with as
we pleased.
"Just then the round-up came on, and we were too busy to pay much
attention to the mine. Each of us would have trusted the other
with his life, or so I thought. But we cut the paper in half,
each of us keeping one part, in order that nobody else could
steal the secret from the one that held the paper. The last time
I had been in El Paso I had bought my little girl a gold chain
with two lockets pendent. These lockets opened by a secret
spring, and in one of them I put my half of the map.
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