IN NEED OF A FRIEND.
Tom's guess had hit the nail on the head. It was all true. Jim
Stapleton and Seth Ingalls were not the first men to have their brains
turned by an insatiable lust for gold. On every other subject
perfectly normal, they were insane on this one topic.
It was the peculiar light that shone in Stapleton's eyes when he spoke
of the yellow metal that had first excited Tom's doubts. Seth Ingalls'
sullen, taciturn manner had shown that he was afflicted with a
different form of the same mania. In Jim Stapleton's case it took the
twist of a desire to confide in the boys his glorious prospects. In
Seth Ingalls the same malady induced a dark, secretive manner and a
suspicion that everybody was in search of their secret.
The alarming situation of our two young friends may be thus summed up.
They were in the hands of two desperate and powerful lunatics, who
almost assuredly would not let them depart until the fabulous deposit
of gold was discovered. The boys did not dare even to mention the
subject of leaving the cavern or the camp, for fear of arousing the
men's suspicions, in which case it appeared almost certain that the
two crazed miners would unhesitatingly forcibly restrain them or kill
them.
Both of the lads recalled reading of such cases, but Jim Stapleton and
Seth Ingalls were the first living examples of the gold seeking form
of insanity with which they had come in contact. There had not been a
word of fiction in Jim Stapleton's account of how he came by the
chart, by means of which he and his friend Ingalls had joined forces
and started on their insane quest. It was all as true as gospel.
The ten years of search in the wild solitudes of the north, their
hopes, their disappointments, their privations had turned their
brains. Lured on by their dazzling vision of wealth beyond the dreams
of avarice, they had kept up, with an insane persistence, their
search, till at last they had stumbled across this spot back of the
Frying Pan Range which did, in very fact, look like the site of the
new Golconda as described on the old, time-yellowed map.
The main defect of the whole scheme had been detected by Tom. The
original plan had been the work of a man whose brain was admittedly
turned by sufferings and hardships. It possessed, moreover, one
inherent flaw, and that was that while the Frying Pan Range was
indicated in a general manner on the map, the precise spot in which
the gold lay was not set forth. It might have been anywhere along the
four hundred miles of solitary, unexplored country the range
traversed.
It was apparent to Tom that the two men, driven half insane by their
long hunt, had taken for granted when they came across the spot in
which they were now encamped, that they had at last struck El Dorado.
Whether the objections that had at once flashed into his mind had ever
occurred to them, or whether they had willfully ignored them, tempted
beyond their judgment by the _ignis fatuus_ of the gold hunters' lust,
mattered little. Tom was certain that they had made a woeful mistake
and were miles from the hiding place of the fabled gold, even if such
a place had ever existed.
Granting that the gold mine described on the chart did exist, only
chance could have given them success. But accompanied by their
faithful black, whose brain alone had not given way under the
continued strain, they had stuck to the quest till their judgment was
warped and they were ready to accept almost any site that bore even a
fancied resemblance to the blurred outlines of the dead miner's map.
In nothing, in fact, was their mental unsoundness more startlingly
indicated as in their determination that this was the right place on
which they had stumbled, despite the almost self-evident proofs that
it was not.
They had been established in the cavern for some three months when Tom
and Jack had so unfortunately stumbled upon them. When they
encountered the boys and held that whispered consultation, the lives
of our two young friends had literally hung in the balance. For the
object of that talk was whether they should despatch the boys
forthwith and thus render them incapable of spreading the secret (for
they were convinced they were spies sent out by fancied enemies), or
whether they should take them into their confidence and hold them
prisoners till they reached the gold. This latter event they fancied
was not far distant, and they finally decided to hasten its coming by
holding the lads captives and making them do their share of the work.
In their warped minds this course was quite justifiable, as they
intended, when they struck the vast wealth they imagined awaited them,
to reimburse the lads a thousandfold for their labors. This was the
main cause of their sparing the boys' lives. They needed extra help to
enable them to reach their fancied gold quickly and therefore they
decided not to slay them outright.
The boys knew that this success would, in all human probability, never
be attained, while the men were equally certain that the achievement
of their golden hopes was but a few days or weeks distant at most.
Their only course, they decided, after a necessarily hasty whispered
consultation, was to pretend to fall in with whatever plan the crazy
gold hunters might propose to them, and work or do whatever might be
required with all the cheerfulness they could muster. In this way, and
in this way alone, could they hope to lull the suspicions of the two
men who held them in their power.
It was the only course that promised hope. To attempt to escape would
be rash in the extreme, and might have fatal results.
They had about reached this conclusion when Stapleton strolled out.
"My partner and I have been talking," he said, "and we have decided to
give you youngsters a chance to share in our fortunes. Of course you
won't get an equal share, but since you have found us out, we mean to
make you work and will reward you well for it. We'll make you wealthy
for the rest of your lives."
"You mean that you want us to help you in your gold hunt?" asked Tom.
"That's it exactly. We can't be far from the gold now. A few more days
will bring us to it. The more hands the lighter work, so you may
consider yourselves elected members of the firm."
"It's very kind of you," said Tom gravely. Jack was beyond speech.
"That's all right, we like you. If you will be useful to us, we'll
make you rich. Rufus might have had the same chance, but he doesn't
appear to want to take it. He just keeps on cooking and keeping things
to rights in the cave."
Tom was weighing every word carefully before he answered.
"I suppose Rufus is just lazy and doesn't like to work," he hazarded.
"Oh, no; it isn't that. He's energetic enough when he wants to be. But
it's something quite different."
"Indeed?"
"Yes; sometimes we think he's a little cracked. What do you suppose he
says?"
"I've no idea."
"Why, that we have made a mistake, and that this isn't Dead Man's Mine
at all, and that there is no such place."
Tom nudged Jack and broke into a laugh as if it was the funniest thing
he had ever heard. Jack gave a ghastly echo of his companion's
cleverly assumed mirth.
"What can have given him such an idea as that?" asked Tom.
"Well, we've shown him the chart once or twice, but he's so thick he
can't make head or tail of it. Why, the poor, benighted idiot asked us
once if this was the place where was that dead tree that shows on the
chart."
"And what did you say?"
"Just what I told you. The tree had either blown down, rotted away or
been struck by lightning."
The earnestness with which the unfortunate victim of an hallucination
sought to explain away everything was pitiable.
"That stopped his objections, I suppose," said Tom.
"Oh, yes. He said nothing more. Seth said that if he heard any more
rubbish from him, he'd shut him up effectually and we have heard no
more from him on the subject. That's the reason we think that Rufus is
a little off. He gets such queer ideas in his head."
"Oh, well, we are all liable to get our ideas mixed up a bit
sometimes," was Tom's diplomatic reply.
But as Stapleton turned back into the case, his heart sank. The man
was even crazier than he had thought. He actually thought that by
detaining the boys he was doing them a good turn.
Through the gloom that obsessed his spirits, only one ray of light
shone and that was this:
From what Stapleton had said the boy had deduced one clear fact. Rufus
the negro was, apparently, the only one of the trio in the full
possession of his senses. In an emergency they would have to trust to
the black man to help them.
Would he do it?
It was a question upon which much depended at the crisis the boys'
affairs had reached.