However, all this was of small account to the thrilling news of a new
discovery and working of the "old gold ledge" at Buena Vista! As the
three kept their secret from the world, the discovery was accepted in
the neighborhood as the result of careful examination and prospecting on
the part of Colonel Swinger and his partner Larry Hawkins. And when
the latter gentleman afterwards boldly proposed to Polly Swinger, she
mischievously declared that she accepted him only that the secret might
not go "out of the family."
LIBERTY JONES'S DISCOVERY
It was at best merely a rocky trail winding along a shelf of the eastern
slope of the Santa Cruz range, yet the only road between the sea and the
inland valley. The hoof-prints of a whole century of zigzagging mules
were impressed on the soil, regularly soaked by winter rains and dried
by summer suns during that period; the occasional ruts of heavy,
rude, wooden wheels--long obsolete--were still preserved and visible.
Weather-worn boulders and ledges, lying in the unclouded glare of an
August sky, radiated a quivering heat that was intolerable, even while
above them the masts of gigantic pines rocked their tops in the cold
southwestern trades from the unseen ocean beyond.
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