THE END OF A CROOKED ROAD
Leaving the boys in wild commotion at the camp, Jimmie followed swiftly
on in the direction which he believed Toombs to have taken.
“I just can’t let that geezer get away!” the boy muttered as he traveled
over the rough ground at great speed.
After half an hour’s steady walking he came to an elevation from which
he saw two figures moving away to the north. One of the men seemed to
him to be Toombs, while the other might well be classed as an Indian.
They were moving at a good pace, although the Indian was frequently
obliged to assist his companion over rocky crags.
The two seemed entirely unconscious of pursuit. Indeed, as it was
afterwards learned, they were beyond the sound of Gilroy’s voice when he
shouted out the alarm which had awakened the boys. The fat clerk had
been so frightened that he had made no attempt to sound an alarm until
the Indian he feared was too far away to inflict injury upon him!
And so, believing that the boys still slept in the camp, and that the
escape of their prisoner still remained undiscovered, the two made their
way, not to the old camp near the mission, but toward the sheltered bit
of ground which enclosed the Devil’s Punch Bowl.
“Now, I wonder why they are going there!” mused Jimmie, gaining upon the
two fugitives every moment. “If that fellow who cut Toombs out of our
camp,” he went on, “should prove to be a Hoola Indian, fully advised as
to the deposit of gold, he might give Toombs information calculated to
make us a lot of trouble.”
The boy was satisfied that neither Toombs nor any of the half-breeds
possessed any information concerning the hidden mime. According to
Norman’s story, only the Hoola Indians knew about the wonderful deposit
which the boys had blundered upon during their trip to the underground
passage. His thought now was that the Indian with Toombs might be
leading that individual to the treasure.
Wishing earnestly that he had not started on such a mission alone, the
boy followed on until the two stopped at the very verge of the Devil’s
Punch Bowl. By this time Jimmie was completely exhausted. He had been on
his feet all night, laboring under great excitement, and had had only a
short bit of rest after breakfast. He was, therefore, more than glad
when Toombs and the Indian paused at the Devil’s Punch Bowl and threw
themselves on the ground.
Lying behind a boulder, the boy saw the Indian pointing down into the
pit, and it seemed to him that he was directing the attention of his
companion to the old channel where he, Jimmie, had met with such
exciting adventures.
“It’s dollars to doughnuts,” the boy mused, “that that’s Sigma, the
Indian, Norman referred to. If it is, he’s showing Toombs where the gold
mine is. That’s just our luck, anyway!”
Foot by foot the boy passed from one rock to another until he came
within sound of the men’s voices. He could not understand what the
Indian was saying, but Toombs seemed to be able to grasp the meaning of
the uncouth words used.
“And you say there are tons of gold under there?” the boy heard Toombs
ask. “Is there any way of getting at it at once?”
Jimmie saw Sigma nod his head vigorously.
“Can you understand exactly what I say?” Toombs asked in a moment.
Sigma nodded again, and the Wall street man went on:
“What we want to do right now,” he said, “is to get the gold out without
any publicity whatever. Do you understand that?”
The Indian looked puzzled at the long words used, but nodded. It was
evident that he understood the general import of the other’s talk.
“The men I represent,” Toombs went on, “would throw a few dirty dollars
into my lap for information which would bring them millions. Now my idea
is to get the gold out and get away with it.”
“Say, Toombs,” Jimmie whispered to himself behind the rock, “you’re a
dirty old schemer!”
“With the gold in our possession, we can disappear from the country, you
and I. We need never trouble ourselves about money any more.”
The Indian nodded while a pleased smile came over his rugged face.
“How many know of this mine?” asked Toombs.
Sigma held up eight fingers and pointed into the pit.
“Only that many?” asked Toombs.
“The rest dead!” answered Sigma.
“And where are they now?” demanded the Wall street man.
“All in the mine getting out gold!” was the reply.
“They can get it out pretty fast, can’t they?” asked Toombs.
The Indian nodded, and said in a guttural voice that many great heaps of
it had already been taken out of the rock and stored in the inner
chamber. Toombs’ eyes brightened wickedly at the information.
“And they’re all in there now?” he asked. “All the heaps?”
Sigma nodded again.
“We don’t want anyone watching us,” Toombs explained, “so we must make
sure about their all being in the cave. You go through the dry channel
and find out if they are all really there, then come to the entrance and
signal to me and go back and explain what we have planned—that I am to
market the gold, for them and receive half.”
“Now it strikes me,” Jimmie mused, “that if I were in Sigma’s place, I
wouldn’t go into that old channel and leave Toombs on the outside,
especially if every living person having knowledge of the deposit of
gold was on the inside, too!”
The Indian disappeared over the edge of the Devil’s Punch Bowl and made
his way to the bottom, pursuing practically the same tactics resorted to
by the boys the day before. As soon as he disappeared in the old dry
channel, Toombs, who had carefully watched the Indian’s every move,
proceeded to follow into the depression.
The man was fat, unwieldy, and out of training, but his greed for gold
was so great, his daring so remarkable, that he managed to reach the
bottom of the pit with only a few slight bruises. Jimmie lay down at the
lip of the pit and regarded him quizzically.
“I’d like to know what the game is,” the boy thought.
The tragedy enacted before his eyes during the next hour informed him
fully on this point.
In a short time Sigma returned to the entrance of the old channel and
held up eight fingers to Toombs. His face showed surprise at seeing the
Wall street man at the bottom of the pit. After giving the signal he
stood with his head bowed for a moment, as if in deep thought, and then
turned back into the tunnel.
It was then that the real purpose of the Wall street man became known.
He threw off his coat and vest and began filling the channel leading to
the crevice, now carrying away the waters of the pool! He worked
frantically until the sweat streamed down his face in tiny rivulets,
notwithstanding the cool air of the mountain.
At first he dug away with his fingers, but that appeared to be too slow
a process for his eager haste. There were pieces of shale lying about
which the boys had used the previous afternoon, and with these he made
much better progress.
Although it had taken the boys a long time to dig the trench connecting
the pool with its original outlet, it was by no means difficult for
Toombs to fill in the channel in a very short time. Slowly but steadily
the waters of the pool lifted as the obstructions in its channel forced
the water toward the level of the old outlet.
While the man worked nervously, strenuously, and with such strength as
he would never have been able to exhibit at ordinary times, Jimmie saw
the dark face of Sigma appear at the opening. The Indian stood for an
instant with folded hands as he saw what Toombs was doing.
“It’s all up with the fat Wall street man now!” Jimmie mused. “The
Indians are wise to the fact that his only purpose in sending Sigma in
was to bunch those possessing information of the mine and drown them all
like a lot of baby cats. What they’ll do to him now will be a plenty. I
wouldn’t be in his shoes for a good deal.”
So busily was Toombs engaged in his work that he did not hear the
smothered ejaculations or the soft footsteps of the Indian as he crept
up behind him. It was evident that he believed the Indians to be all
massed in the gold chamber.
When, at last, he was seized in the muscular grasp of the Indian, the
boy saw him smile, evidently trying to explain away his actions. Sigma
shook his head and uttered a peculiar cry. The next moment seven Indians
came from the entrance and gathered around the now crestfallen Wall
street man.
There was not much talk. In fact, Jimmie could not hear a word that was
spoken. All he knew was that there was no delay. The Indians took up the
work of filling the channel which Toombs had begun. Then, when it was
quite full and the water was roaring and swirling into the entrance so
recently vacated, they bound Toombs hand and foot and cast him into the
torrent.
Jimmie gave a low groan of horror and turned away. He knew that Toombs
fully deserved his fate. Still, his punishment seemed to be a brutal
one. He knew that the mangled body of the unfortunate man would be swept
from level to level and from rock to rock until it came to the round
aperture in the floor which carried the water straight down for how many
hundred feet no one could estimate.
He knew that in time the Indians would find a way of getting out the
gold unless the corporation represented by Jack’s father should take
advantage of the information secured by the Boy Scouts and get the gold
in advance. He knew, too, that Toombs’ craving for gold would at last be
satisfied. For a long time his body would swing about in eddys which
whirled about heaps of gold worthy a king’s ransom.
“Serves him just right!” the boy mused as he turned away. “He was the
crookedest man that ever lived. And now,” he added with a sigh, “I’ll
get back to camp and see if the boys have been cooking anything more to
eat.”
When he reached the camp, a great kettle of bear stew was simmering over
the fire, and Frank and Jack were explaining to Mr. Bosworth the story
of the night and telling of the discovery of the wonderful deposit of
gold in the vicinity of the Devil’s Punch Bowl. The capitalist seemed
overjoyed at the success of the expedition, and when Jimmie, in a voice
not very strong, described the death of Toombs and the re-flooding of
the mine, the silence was broken only by exclamations of pity for the
man whose greed had led him to such a frightful death.
“But how are we going to get this gold out, now that the mine is
flooded?” asked Mr. Bosworth.
“Huh,” grinned Jimmie, “guess we can unflood it. I could do it myself
with a good big shovel.”
“I presume the Indians will change the course of the outlet as soon as
they find some willing to market the gold for them,” suggested Ned.
“We have not the least intention in the world of robbing the Indians of
all the wealth,” Mr. Bosworth declared. “On the contrary, we’ll get the
gold out and give them a fair share of the proceeds of the mine. After
dinner, we’ll go up and negotiate with them.”
“I hope you’ll send me back to New York immediately,” pleaded Gilroy,
turning to his employer.
“We’ll all be going out directly,” was the reply.
“Now, look here!” Jimmie declared. “We came in here for a vacation, and
we’ve been mixed up with half-breeds, and Indians, and bears, and old
Franciscan missions, built underground, and pots of gold at the
rainbow’s end, and a thousand other things that haven’t given us much
joy. Now I propose that we stay here and have our visit to the mountains
out after all this mess is cleared up.”
“I’ve got a bum arm,” Harry exclaimed, “but I vote for staying in the
hills a month. If I can’t climb trees and send Boy Scout signals
floating over the mountain tops,” he added with a laugh, “I can sit here
and broil bear steaks and have all the fun in the world seeing you boys
eating them. That will be fun enough for me!”
“Besides,” he went on with an amusing grin, “I want to stay here long
enough to make the personal acquaintance of that flag on the cliff—the
flag of Spain, without any yellow in it, that stands for a billion of
yellow metal not far away!”
“The flag on the cliff?” repeated Mr. Bosworth.
“Sure,” replied Jimmie. “There has been a stone flag waving on the cliff
over the old mine for two or three hundred years. It isn’t much of a
flag to look at, but it represents the kingdom of Spain, crown and all,
and the old Indians loved it because they knew of the treasure it
guarded.”
“Then our first visit,” Mr. Bosworth declared, “shall be to the flag on
the cliff!”