"Look here, Aggy Jones, do you mean to
say that legless wonder has stuck you?"
"Mr. Troy conveyed all rights in the property to me for $10, paid in
hand, including this method of findin' out where it is," says he.
"Where'd you get the $10, and me not know it?" says I.
"Trivial, trivial," says Ag.
"And do you expect to follow that dotted line until you stub your toe
over a half-ton nuggets?"
"Frivolous, frivolous," says Ag.
"Yes," I says, "yes. Trivial--frivolous--all right--but what's that
red cross?"
"Shows the location plainly," says he, shiftin' his cigar. "Where the
arms of that cross intersect, we double it, or turn nurses in the army."
Well, I stared at him. Too much thinkin' goes to a man's head
sometimes.
"You feel anything strange about you anywheres?" says I.
"Yes," says he, tapping it. "This map-- Accordin' to the scale of
miles these here arms on the cross are somethin' like fifty miles long.
Ah, what a merry, merry time we shall have, Hy, chasin' up and down
glass mountains, eatin' prickly pear, drinking rarely, and cullin' a
rattlesnake here and there to twine in our locks. It will seem like
old times, dropping a rock in your boots in the mornin' to quell the
quivering centipede and the upstanding and high-jumping tarantula."
"Say," says I, "do you think there's a mine here at all?"
"Mine!" says he, like I'd asked a most unexpected question.
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