"Keep it, keep it," bade the German, with grand gesture. "It is not worth my bodder. I haf plenty. I gif you so much, but I do not want you to steal it."
So they carefully scraped the treasure into George's new buckskin sack already open. "We'll divvy," proposed George, "but let me carry it, will you?"--and accompanied the German down the main gulch.
"Ja," he explained, to Terry, "I did start myself back an' I sell you an' dot odder partner my sacks an' my tools an' my sauerkraut. An' den, when dose stages begin to pass me, an' peoples begin to come, I t'ink maybe I was one fool again, so I turn 'round."
"How did you get in here, though?" asked Terry. "Are you the first? Did anybody else come with you?"
"Ja, I am the first. No, nobody else come--joost me an' my family an' my wagon an' my oxen. People said 'the mountains, the mountains, the gold is not at Cherry Creek, it is in the mountains'; so we go into de mountains, an' we climb up an' we climb down, an' when we get to where dere is plenty gold, we stop. Dose fellers in dot odder gulch dey come later, but I pay no attention to dem, except when one is in my gulch an' den I drive him out."
How the Lightning Express ever had managed to achieve all that "climbing up" and "climbing down" until it finally arrived here in this remote spot, Terry could not figure out--and the German seemed not to know, himself. He certainly had earned his luck. He had spoken truly, too, for now the gulch widened, and there, before, was his headquarters--a homelike camp, with the two oxen grazing, and the wagon whose torn top still displayed the legend "Litening Express," and a bough-roofed dug-out, and a clothes-line with washing waving from it, and his family hovering around the cook stove set under a tree.
"I find my cook stove an' pick him up," he announced. "Ja, we haf lots to eat, but no sauerkraut. Only deers an' boof'lo an' chickens an' fishes."
The menu sounded very alluring, the Mrs. German and all the six girls, even the youngest, smiled welcome, and the two guests were disposed to stay for the promised supper. But first their host, who seemed extraordinarily good-natured and hospitable, mysteriously beckoned them aside; led them to the wagon.
