A young boy (about 15 years old) was sent out across some neighboring land by his father. The boy crossing land owned by a man who was an enemy of the boy's father. The boy also had an older man who was accompanying him, and as the two started out on horses, the father shouted, "A million dollars is better than two million dollars."

As the boy and the old man rode along, they came to a place where they had to cross some water. The boy went ahead first on his horse out into the water, while the old man stood and waited, not going for some reason. The distance across the water turned out to be longer than the boy had expected. He kept going until finally the horse sank below water. The boy was still hanging onto his back.

While the old man stood and watched, he dropped a sack which he was carrying into the water and it floated down near to the boy. The boy saw it. As the old man waited on the bank and watched, the boy sank under the water. He kept bobbing up and down in the water, and the horse kept bobbing up and down. Finally, the boy, the horse and the bag disappeared from sight.

The old man stood and waited, thinking they had drowned. The old man waited for a while, finally simply returning to the house whence he had been sent. The old man related what had happened to the boy's father, who, of course, became extremely angry. The father set the old man down in a chair and attempted to extract from him all the details of what had transpired. The father pulled out a map, examined it, and tried to decipher what might have happened to the boy.

The land in the entire area had been flooded, and as the father looked at the map, he tried to deduce how long it would take the water in that area to recede. The father knew that even if the boy were alive, the boy would be in great danger, because the boy would be in the territory of his enemy. The father turned to another person in the room, held up his middle finger and twisted it as if he were turning it in something, thereby signifying something. But the action didn't seem to have anything to do with the father's enemy. It seemed more to signify that the boy might have been stabbed, or something similar to that.

The father spoke, revealing that before the boy had left, the father had cut open the boy's stomach without the boy's knowing it, and had then somehow inserted a million dollars into the boy's stomach. After being sewn back up by the father, the stomach hadn't even looked as if it had been cut open.

It was thought that the sack which the old man had been carrying and which he had dropped into the creek, had contained two million dollars.

As the two men sat and further pondered the events, the question which arose in their minds was this: Had the little boy jumped off his horse and had he tried to retrieve the two million dollars (in which case he would have probably drowned) or had he stayed on the horse?

The question which revolved in their minds, was whether the boy had known the money had been sewn up in his stomach. Actually, the truth was that the little boy did know that the money was sewn up in his stomach. It was the old man who hadn't known the money was in the boy's stomach. When the father told the old man that a million dollars was in the boy's stomach, the old man replied, "Well, he's probably OK then, because he probably stayed on his saddle, because when he was floating along, I shouted out, 'A million dollars is better than two.' Therefore, if he knew he had a million dollars, he probably wouldn't have jumped off the saddle and tried to catch that two million dollars. So he's probably still alive."

After sitting for a while trying to figure it out, the father finally told the old man that the old man was going to have to go down to the territory of the father's enemy to see if he could find out what had happened. Since the old man didn't belong to either the side of the father nor of the father's enemy, the old man wouldn't be harmed by the father's enemy. The old man arrived at a village with adobe buildings as might be found in Mexico. The old man got a room in what appeared to be a small hotel in the village.

In the street were gathered a number of people from the community. They looked up to see the boy riding his horse into the town from the woods. The boy was asleep as he rode. When he finally reached the people, he opened his eyes and realized he was in a village and that he had survived the ordeal. After looking around at the people in amazement staring at him, the boy said something to the group. He then said, "Thank you. Good-bye."

As he started to ride off the people continued to just stand and stare, until suddenly they hollered out to the boy. The boy stopped.

The man who was the father's enemy walked up to the boy and told the boy that the boy should accept the hospitality of the man (the father's enemy). The father's enemy told the boy that the boy could have anything the boy wanted while he stayed there. The boy, although unsure, decided to stay.