Then he stepped to the tree where his rifle stood and called to Thor as he did always when he left the dog in camp: "Watch, Thor! Watch, sir."
It was not always that he carried his rifle. He explained, while he looked to her to come with him.
"We'll talk things over; but in any case it's clear that we're getting short of food. Maybe, while we talk, we can bring down something in the way of provisions with a lucky shot."
Willing enough was she to-day for talk; at least to listen to whatever he might say. She followed, stopping only to stoop and pat old Thor's head; already she counted the faithful brute a friend. Thor tried to lick her hand; for already Thor, like Thor's master, had bestowed an abiding love to the first true girl who had ever intimately entered the life of either. Thor wanted to follow; he whined and looked anxious, ears pricked forward, tail wagging.
"Down, Thor," commanded Standing, if only because already he had issued his command. "You watch camp for us; watch, Thor."
Thor dropped down at the entrance of Lynette's grotto; for one instant his great head lay between his forepaws; then he jerked it up again so that he might watch them as they went through the thickets to the creek.
Standing carried a cup with him. When they came to the waterfall leaping down a twenty-foot rocky spillway, glassily clear, making a pigmy thunder in the narrow-walled ravine, he rinsed and filled his cup and gave it to Lynette. She drank. Thereafter, and with no further rinsing, he drank. She sat upon a big rock, leaning back against a leaning tree trunk; he sat down close enough to her to allow of words carrying above the thunder of the falling waters and filled his after-lunch pipe.
"I know as much as you do of the place to find the gold!" she told him again. "And I, though a girl, have as much interest in a fortune to be made as any man can have. That's fair warning to you, Bruce Standing!"
"It's neither your gold nor mine. By right of discovery, it belongs to a little shrimp named Mexicali Joe _Alguna-Cosa_. Our hands are off, so far as our own pockets are concerned."
"But.... You took quick interest when you learned where it was! You have some plan ... you commanded your friend Billy Winch to keep Joe well guarded!"