The Little Woman was in a very good humor and kept Casey "jumpin' sideways," as he afterwards confessed to me, wondering just what she meant or whether she meant nothing at all by her remarks concerning his future wealth and dignity and how he would forget old friends.
She even pretended she had forgotten the place, and was not at all sure that this was the right canyon, when they came to it.

She studied landmarks and then said they were all wrong and that the place was marked in her mind by something entirely different and not what she first named.
She deviled Casey all she could, and led him straight to the spot and suggested that they eat their lunch there, within twenty feet of the bushes from which she had seen the Indian creep with the sack on his back.
She underrated Casey's knowledge of minerals; or perhaps she wanted to test it,--you never can tell what a woman really has in the back of her mind.

Casey sat there eating a sour-dough biscuit of his own making, and staring at the steep wall of the canyon because he was afraid to stare at the Little Woman, and so his uncannily keen eye saw a bit of rock no larger than Babe's fist.

It lay just under that particular clump of bushes, in the shade.

And in the shade he saw a yellow gleam on the rock.
He looked at the Little Woman then and grinned, but he didn't say anything until he had taken the coffeepot off the fire, and had filled her cup.
"This ain't a bad canyon to prospect in.