A STRANGE DISCOVERY
Billee Dobb, having listened to the stories of Bud and his cousins, and
the tale told by Sam and his pals, shook his head dubiously.
"I can't figger it all out," he said. "But you sure done a noble job,
Tosh, and we thank you for it. Can you tell us anything about those
rascals with their tanks of gas?"
"I don't know nothin' about gas tanks," said the old man. "But more
than once I've warned you men about----"
What the warning was he did not get a chance to explain, for at that
moment Professor Dodson, the mine expert, with his assistant, Professor
Snath, emerged from the interior of the cave, into whose black depths
they had disappeared some time ago, while Bud and the others were
talking.
"By golly!" exclaimed Billee, suddenly changing the subject. "They got
their report ready pretty quick. I reckon the gold's so thick in there
they don't need to make much of a test. Whoopee! I'll soon have my
self-playin' piano!" He was as eager and excited as a boy. Indeed Bud
and his cousins were not a little excited as they looked at the two
scientists who came out carrying specimens of ore which they had
knocked off the walls of the cave with their peculiar hammers.
"Didn't take you long," commented Bud.
"No, this was an easy problem," answered Professor Dodson. "We don't
even need an assay to determine our findings."
"By golly! What do you know about that?" cried Billee. "About how
many dollars will she run to the ton?" he asked. "I only want to know
_about_," he stipulated. "I won't pin you down by five or ten dollars,
'cause I think that wouldn't be fair. But roughly about how much do
you think our mine will assay to the ton?"
"How much what?" asked Professor Dodson with a peculiar smile. "How
much what to the ton?"
"How much gold, of course!" exclaimed Billee. "What else? Gold's what
we want; ain't it?" and he chuckled as he turned to his friends.
"Sure--gold!" was the murmur.
"Then I'm sorry to have to tell you that there is not one ounce of gold
in any number of tons of ore and rock in that cave!" was the unexpected
and startling answer. "There isn't any gold at all."
"No gold!" cried Bud.
"No gold!" echoed his cousins.
"No--no--gold!" faltered Billee Dobb, his jaw falling. He saw his
self-playing piano fading back into the dim vista of his dreams.
"No gold," repeated Professor Dodson. "What we have here," and he
indicated the ore specimens held by himself and Professor Snath, "is a
selected lot of samples of iron sulphid. It is a yellow ore that looks
very much like gold, but which has none of the properties of real gold.
In fact it is so often mistaken for the valuable metal that it has come
to be called 'Fools' Gold.' I am sorry, but such is the case. I shall
so report to Mr. Merkel, who engaged me to come out here after hearing
his son's account."
"Fools' gold!" murmured Bud. "Well, it fooled us all right."
"Yes, and it fooled those other fellows," said Nort. "The men with the
gas cylinders," he added.
As the two professors looked a little puzzled, Dick explained:
"There were some men hiding in this cave who must have thought, the
same as we did, that it contained gold. They drove out Mr. Tosh, who
used the cavern to brew his medicine. Then they drove us out. They
used tanks of some poison gas, or at least gas that made a man
unconscious. We had to put on gas masks, the kind used in the war, to
fight 'em. But we drove 'em out."
"And a lot of good it did us," said Bud gloomingly, "if there isn't any
gold in there."
"No, the evidence is too plain to be mistaken," said Professor Snath.
"It does not even require a laboratory test to prove that the cave is
rich in iron sulphid, but not gold."
"Maybe it will turn out to be an iron mine instead of a gold mine!" put
in Billee, with new hope showing on his face. "Iron's valuable. Not
worth as much as gold, of course, but a good iron mine--say, boys,
maybe I'll get that self-playin' piano yet."
But again his hopes were dashed.
"It wouldn't pay to work this section even for iron," said Professor
Dodson, and his assistant nodded his agreement.
"Well, then," remarked Nort, "we'll have to keep on raising cattle."
"But we can't do that if these fellows are going to let loose a flood
of poison gas and kill them off every now and then!" bitterly cried
Bud. "We're beat either way you look at it. Just as you said, Billee,
this is Death Valley."
"Tell me more about this!" suddenly suggested the older scientist.
"What is all this about poison gas in tanks killing cattle?"
"I can tell you!" came from Old Tosh. "I know all about it but nobody
would ever listen to me. They said I was crazy. But I know! Look
here!"
He pointed to a crack, or fissure in the rocky floor of the glen, not
far from the cave entrance. It was just such a crack as Bud and his
cousins had noticed one day near the place where they had found some
dead cattle.
"Listen to that! It's rising!" cried Old Tosh, bending over the crack.
The two professors, the boy ranchers and some of the punchers leaned
over and listened. From somewhere down in the depths of the earth came
the rustle and swish of running water.
"An underground stream," said Professor Dodson. "They are not uncommon
in this region. But----"
Suddenly he started back and withdrew his face quickly from above the
crack in the earth.
"Hurry away from here!" he cried. "The gas is rising. I begin to
understand now. It is the secret you have been trying to solve. Hurry
away! It may not be deadly, but it will overcome all of us in a short
time."
He ran down the defile, away from the long fissure, followed by the
others, Billee and his men driving the ponies before them. Professor
Dodson had made a strange discovery, after Old Tosh had put him on the
track of it.