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Of the three, only the middle-sized one, a good-looking chap whose rough outing clothes fitted him as if they were tailor-made, was showing signs of impatience. The biggest of the three, a square-shouldered young athlete with good gray eyes set wide apart, and a shock of dark-red, curly hair, was standing at a window which commanded a magnificent view of the high, forested mountain range lifting the skyline to the westward, while the other member of the trio, an undersized fellow with a thin, eager face and pale blue eyes, was examining the mineral specimens in a corner cabinet.
“Gee! I wish Uncle Billy would come!” said the impatient one, jumping up to make a restless circuit of the room. “We don’t want to miss that train.”
The big fellow turned from his window. “You’re sure he got in last night?” he said.
“Oh, yes; they came in on the Flyer. Aunt Stella called mother over the ’phone after the train got in—just to let us know. But I wish he’d come. We don’t want to lose another single day of this bully weather.”
Dick Maxwell’s impatience was not altogether unreasonable. Ten days earlier Mr. William Starbuck—the “Uncle Billy” in question—had made a short stop in the Middle-Western college town where Dick and his two companions were just winding up their Freshman year, and had asked Dick how he was meaning to spend the long vacation. One thing had brought on another, and the upshot of the talk was an offer on the part of “Uncle Billy” to send Dick, and any two of his college-mates he might pick out, on a summer prospecting trip in the Hophra Mountains, the object in view being the possible discovery, not especially of silver or gold, but more particularly of new sources of supply of the rare metals, tungsten, vanadium, molybdenum, and the like, used in the arts and manufactures.
Dick hadn’t wasted a moment in choosing the first of his companions for the summer outing. Larry Donovan—the big fellow at the office window—son of a crippled locomotive engineer on the home railroad, had been his chum from their grade-school days in Brewster, and the two had spent the preceding summer together as “cubs” on the engineering staff of the railroad of which Dick’s father was the general manager, so Larry was promptly elected as Number Two in the prospecting trip. For the third member they had both picked upon Charles Purdick—Larry’s roommate in college—for several reasons: for one thing, “Little Purdy” was a pretty good plain cook; and for another, he needed the wages that Mr. William Starbuck was going to pay each member of the prospecting party irrespective of the success of the trip in the discovery of any new mineral deposits.
