Juan and Willy stayed at the tailings pond that night and the next day. At nightfall on the second day, as they finished their third fish, Juan walked to the top of a big purple tailings hill and there he saw it—their truck stuck in a ditch!
Juan ducked down and looked every which way in case he had been observed by the man with the gun.
“Willy!” he said running back to their camp, “Our truck is over the top of the hill. I don’t see the man with the gun. He hi-sided it and left it! It must have been there all this time while we was camping right over the hill from it. All along it was here!”
Juan and Willy ran to the hilltop. The sat watching the truck for a half an hour before they got brave enough to go down to it. Then they ran toward their truck so fast they almost stabbed themselves with the cholla cactus that was growing over some of the dirt-covered tailings. Their legs were running pell-mell down to their precious truck.
“Hello! Hello!” said Willy pounding the hood. “Hello, old truck of ours!”
It took them a day to get the truck out of the spot the old robber had left it in. They were scared the whole time that the robber would return, but he’d taken off for good and they traced his boot prints heading for some far-away mountains.
When they got the truck out of the ditch, they decided to go back to their original camp for their gold mining supplies which they had left, and they took a few more fish out of the tailings pond and kept them in a bucket with water on the way back to town.
They prayed that their truck wouldn’t break down on the highway and luck was with them. They arrived back from their second gold mining adventure (the Santa Claus Mine had been their first) safely, without damaging the truck they had worked so hard to find and repair, but without any fabulous riches.