“He says, now, he knows a man out in California, a Spanish man, who was two hundred and fifty years old, and he had quite a lot of money, gold and silver, he’d dug out of the mountains.  Greenwood says he’s known of gold and silver for years, himself.  Well, this Spanish man had relatives that wanted his property, and he’d made a will and left it to them; but he wouldn’t die, the climate was so good.  So his folks allowed maybe if they sent him to Spain on a journey he’d die and then they’d get the property legal.  So he went, and he did die; but he left orders for his body to be sent back to California to be buried.  So when his body came they buried him in California, the way he asked—­so Greenwood says.

“But did they get his property?  Not at all!  The old Spanish man, almost as soon as he was buried in California dirt, he came to life again!  He’s alive to-day out there, and this man Greenwood says he’s a neighbor of his and he knows him well!  Of course, if that’s true you can believe almost anything about what a wonderful country California is.  But for one, I ain’t right sure.  Maybe not everybody who goes to California is going to find a mountain of gold, or live to be three hundred years old!

“But to think, Molly!  Here you knew all this away back to Laramie!  Well, if the hoorah had started there ’stead of here there’d be dead people now back of us more’n there is now.  That old man Bridger told you—­why?  And how could you keep the secret?”

“It was for Will,” said Molly simply.  “I had given him up.  I told him to go to California and forget me, and to live things down.  Don’t chide me any more.  I tried to marry the man you wanted me to marry.  I’m tired.  I’m going to Oregon—­to forget.  I’ll teach school.  I’ll never, never marry—­that’s settled at last.”

“You got a letter from Sara Woodhull too.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Huh!  Does he call that settled?  Is he going to California to forget you and live things down?”

“He says not.  I don’t care what he says.”

“He’ll be back.”

“Spare his journey!  It will do him no good.  The Indian did me a kindness, I tell you!”

“Well, anyways, they’re both off on the same journey now, and who knows what or which?  They both may be three hundred years old before they find a mountain of gold.  But to think—­I had your chunk of gold right in my own hands, but didn’t know it!  The same gold my mother’s wedding ring was made of, that was mine.  It’s right thin now, child.  You could of made a dozen out of that lump, like enough.”

“I’ll never need one, mother,” said Molly Wingate.

The girl, weeping, threw her arms about her mother’s neck.  “You ask why I kept the secret, even then.  He kissed me, mother—­and he was a thief!”

“Yes, I know.  A man he just steals a girl’s heart out through her lips.  Yore paw done that way with me once.  Git up, Dan!  You, Daisy!