“I asked to have him come, too,” declared Tom, as though unwilling his brother should bear all the blame, if blame there was to be.

“That was right, quite right,” said Mr. Wilder, after a quick glance at his wife.  “Tolopah wouldn’t agree with him very well.  We’ve plenty of room and perhaps he will get over his fear.  I can use another hand very well, if he wants work.”

It was a great relief to all the boys to have the matter settled so pleasantly, and they resumed their laughter and chatter.

When dinner was finished they all went out onto the piazza, where Tom and Larry were initiated into the mysteries of throwing a lasso.  Then the visitors were taken around and shown many sights new to them.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE SADDLE

“How far away are those mountains?” asked Tom, gazing in their direction as they walked to the corral the next day.

“About forty miles,” replied Bill.  “They are called the ’Lost Lode’ hills, because there is said to be a rich silver mine in them somewhere that the Spaniards worked hundreds of years ago.  Just where it is, though, no one has ever been able to discover.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could find it?” exclaimed Larry eagerly.  “Do you suppose your father would let us go and try?  Have you ever been over to the hills?”

“Lots of times on hunting trips.  But we never explored them very much.  The trouble is no one knows whether the mine is on this side or the other.”

“But haven’t they searched for it?” queried Tom, to whose mind a silver mine suggested unlimited wealth.

“Lots of men have tried, but no one who has gone to find it has ever been seen again,” returned Bill.  “They say the mine is haunted by the ghosts of the old Spaniards who discovered it and that they kill any one who goes near it.”

At the suggestion of phantom Spaniards guarding the mine and despatching those who found it the brothers laughed.

“You surely don’t believe in ghosts?” inquired Tom, a tone of scorn in his voice.  “Who started the story about the ghosts, anyhow?”

“I don’t know,” responded the elder of the Wilder boys, rather disappointed that the legend did not make more of an impression on his friends.  “We heard it when we came here.  The cowboys all believe it, and nothing would make them pass a night in those hills if they could help it.”

But ghosts were something in which the two brothers had been taught not to believe, and Tom exclaimed: 

“Huh!  I’ll bet some one has found the mine and started these stories to keep other people from going there.  Maybe there are three or four mines,” he added as his lively imagination began to work.

“It’s all right for you to laugh; you haven’t been in the hills,” snapped Horace.  “If you’d heard Cross-eyed Pete tell about the night he was camping there and was scared away by hearing men shooting you might think differently.”