GOLDEN BAIT
During the long race back to Mexico the cruiser’s party never caught up
with the lost time. Henry and Mort were always ahead; at Colon a tramp
steamer had them aboard; at Vera Cruz they debarked; at Mexico City they
were still ahead.
So it was that when the party reached the Dead Hope mine they were quite
prepared for what they found.
Henry Morgan and Mort Beecher had come there four days before; yes, the
superintendent explained, they represented that they had bought a mine
location adjoining the Dead Hope. Yes, they asked to let them sleep in
the old shack at the edge of his Dead Hope property until they could
level off a place on the shaggy hillside for their own mine shaft and
shack. No, he told them, he did not know whether they had done any
exploring in the old shack.
On a warm afternoon Tom, Nicky, Cliff, Bill and Margery stood in the
old, rickety shack, its corrugated metal sides almost ready to drop
apart.
“You can see for yourself,” said the superintendent. “It looks as if
they’ve done some explorin’, at that.” He had been told a good many
facts concerning the adventures the chums had been through, the cause
for their trip, and some deductions concerning the solution of the
mystery of the missing gold dust which Bill, Jack and the chums had
figured out.
“They certainly have been hunting for those papers Margery hid,” Tom
said. “I guess we are beaten. If they find the papers they will destroy
the partnership agreement father got, and change the deeds in some way,
and then, of course, neither Margery nor I can do anything.”
“Well, they’ve torn up the old floor boards under the stove,” said
Cliff, and Nicky echoed his statement. Jack, who came in, stared out of
the dusty, grimy window, with its bit of rag stuffed into a broken pane,
and did not seem to care much what was going on. He appeared to be
trying to get his newly awakened memory to reveal some further pictures
of his past.
“Let’s see if there was anything under the floor—or a place for it,”
Bill suggested, but Margery touched his arm.
“I’ve been trying to remember something,” she said, “and I have. Tom,
Nicky, Cliff—Bill—” she beckoned them close and whispered. They stared
at her.
“The stove isn’t where it was when I hid the—papers!”
“No!” gasped Tom. “Then—where was it before?”
She pointed to another corner.
“The paper may still be under there, then. They haven’t torn up those
boards.” Tom started across the floor. He stopped. Nicky was scratching
his left ear. At the same instant Margery touched Bill’s arm and they
all became very quiet, except Margery who, in a whisper, gasped into
Tom’s ear: “Now do just as Bill said to do if Mort or Henry appeared.”
Tom nodded. In the dimly lit room, bare except for a bed and a stove and
a chair with one leg gone, he and Cliff and Nicky and his sister, with
Bill and Jack, were as silent as statues. So that Henry Morgan strolling
with his mind far away, got half-way through the door before he
discovered them.
“What—say!—er—” he gasped. “Why——”
“Hello!” said Tom. “How’s Mort? And how are you?”
“Um—er—oh! Fine. Fine! ’Cause why? ’Cause we see you got this little
lady safe away from the Indians. We knew you would. I said to Mort,
‘We’ve told the Indians to take good care of them till they want to
leave and then take them safe to the shore.’ He said ‘Seems like
deserting them, seems like,’ but we had to hurry, because—because——”
For once his ’Cause why was forgotten in his effort to hide his
surprise. “——We had to keep an appointment with the captain of a
sloop——”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Tom, playing a part which Bill, Jack and
the chums, and even Mr. Gray, had decided was the surest way to lull
suspicion of what they really meant to accomplish.
“I knew you’d see it. ’Cause why? ’Cause you’re a fine feller. Tom, we
fixed it all up with the Indians about letting Miss Margery go and then
we come on back here. ’Cause why? Mort had remembered about his Golden
Sun. It was a mine and he was anxious we should be partners.”
Tom felt that Henry had mixed himself up in enough half-falsehoods.
“Yes?” he said, with his eyelids lifted and brows arched, playing his
part in laying a trap. “So that’s why, in the old days, Mort didn’t tell
you where the gold dust went——”
Henry darted closer and eagerly demanded:
“Do you know? Do you know anything? I didn’t learn nothing ’cause Mort
got chased by the bandits and hid and then went to Central America.”
“I don’t think you ought to count too much on him for a partner,” Tom
added to his story as Bill had arranged that he should, if circumstances
allowed him to do so. “Henry—what would you say if I showed you how the
gold dust disappeared—and where?”
“Oh! I’d—I’d be grateful. Of course, it won’t do any good now, but it
would be nice to know.”
“Come on, then,” Tom urged, and the whole party, with Bill nudging Nicky
to prevent the youth from doubling up with glee, went up the old trail
to a spot well remembered as the point where the youths first met Henry
Morgan—the man who then boasted that he could “smell money.”
“You said, when we first saw you, that you could smell money,” said Tom.
Henry nodded. “Your nose must have been out of joint,” he said. “Look
here.” He approached the ledge, and pointed overside. Henry, cautiously,
drew close and looked; then he gasped.
“Why!—it’s only down about six feet.”
“Yes, there’s a narrow ledge about six feet down—of course the chasm is
below, but you could get down to the narrow ledge—and, here’s a little
secret—the ledge goes back in under the overhang of rock—if you get on
your stomach and look over, you’ll see!”
“I do,” said Henry, after he had looked. “It’s like a narrow cave under
this overhang I’m lying on.” He stared back again. “What’s that, like
something black, down on the ledge?”
“Oh, that!” said Tom, pretending to be uninterested. “That is the last
sack of the gold dust. Here’s where the mules were stopped and where
Mort dropped the sacks of dust and then, later, he and Margery were down
there, hiding, when the—bandits!—rode past.”
“Well, I’ll be swiggle-swiggered!” gasped Henry. “What’s going to be
done with that sack of dust? And where’s the rest?”
“Oh, a man from the Dead Hope is coming back for it—he just took another
one out. This is the last. We’re going to lock it up with the rest of
the mine’s nuggets and dust, in that old shack, tonight. In the morning
we’ll all escort it to the city. We can’t do anything more here.”
“What did you come here for?”
“Oh, just to look up some papers Margery says father gave her and she
hid in the old shack.”
They all saw the cunning light in Henry’s eyes. “But you ain’t found no
papers!”
Tom laughed. “No,” he said. “The stove has been moved since Margery hid
our papers under the boards beneath it—she thinks it used to be in the
far corner—by the window. We haven’t looked there, though. I don’t think
she remembers after all these years.”
Henry made an excuse and hurried away. Tom looked at his sister and his
chums and then, of a sudden, they all smiled.
“Well,” said Tom, “I’ve baited a trap—hope we get two rats!”