SOLVING THE MYSTERY
The Kid sat up all night with the sufferers at short intervals
administering to each a small portion of potato juice. Ike had recovered
consciousness before they reached the cabin. He was but little injured.
One foot had been burned a little, that was all. It had been the long
strain and the sudden startling appearance of the bear that had caused
the plucky lad to faint. A couple of cups of hot coffee put him into
fair shape, but his astonishment at finding himself safe and in the warm
cabin was great and his surprise at seeing the Kid greater. "Have I been
dreaming and just woke up, Mr. Kid?" he demanded.
The Kid told him of what had happened, softening the horrible details as
much as possible.
"It was Teddy Bear," Ike declared. "I got one look a him before
everything goes black."
"Maybe, the Kid admitted. "I thought there was something familiar about
him, but it was too dark to tell much."
"Those fellows tell me this place where the mountain is, is Rainbow
Bend."
"It is, I bet," exclaimed the Kid. "I've been wondering for a month what
it was the name suggested to me. I was sure there was no place along the
river named that, but still, it suggested something familiar to me, and
now it's all come back to me. I've passed it a couple of times when the
sun hit it just right and made the mountain appear like a great big
rainbow. It's a wonder I didn't guess the place when you asked me
before. A bend in the river with a rainbow mountain on the point of the
bend. Why, no other name could just describe it so well as Rainbow
Bend."
"Then that settles it," said the little Jew, with tears in his eyes.
"Them fellows, I guess, wasn't lying all the time. They said it was
Rainbow Bend and that uncle used to live there in a little log cabin
against the side of the mountain. They told me uncle was dead now and
they took me to the cabin to see his bones, but they were not there.
They looked so frightened when they found them gone that I felt sure
uncle had died there and someone had found his body and carried it away
or buried it. Maybe it was the boys and they keep quiet so as not to let
me worry too much. I think maybe that be it. I feel so bad over uncle,
you understand, that I do not care much what them fellows do to me."
"Lay down boy, and get a bit of sleep if you can," interrupted the Kid,
kindly. "Save your yarn till the boys are able to hear it. It will save
a second telling of it. Just try to go to sleep now. You'll have to take
my place tomorrow."
"Do you think the boys will get well?" Ike asked, anxiously.
"Sure," replied the Kid, cheerfully. "They will be up and around in a
few days, but it's going to take some time for all marks of the disease
to disappear."
Ike rolled over in his bunk and with a sigh of relief closed his eyes
and was soon sound asleep, forgetting his troubles and sorrows and the
short, anxious days and long, weary nights he had spent waiting on his
stricken companions.
The Kid stood for a moment looking tenderly down on the pinched, tired,
little face. "You poor, tuckered-out, little devil," he muttered.
"Hanged if I don't believe you are the pluckiest one of the bunch, and
that's saying a whole lot."
At the first hint of dawn, the Kid awoke Abe and set him to cooking
breakfast. Ike he let sleep on until the meal was ready. As soon as it
was finished, he gave instructions about administering the potato juice,
and hitching up the boys' team, as his own was sadly in need of rest, he
skirted the mountain's base and rounded into the cove beyond. His errand
was much the same as that undertaken by Clay and Case upon another
occasion. Common humanity demanded that the two men, bad though they
were, should not lie exposed to the wolves. He soon reached the scene of
the previous night's encounter, where the three bodies lay as he had
left them. He buried the two men in much the same way as Clay and Case
had buried the murdered miner. This done, he turned his attention to the
bear. It was Teddy alright, but not such a Teddy as had run away from
his masters. This Teddy was thin and gaunt and it was evident from the
ferociousness of his face that he had completely lapsed back again into
the savagery of his brutal ancestors.
"Hum," mused the Kid as he looked down at the savage face. "Just mad,
hungry, and desperate enough to want to kill anything you met up
against, wasn't you, Teddy? You were just running amuck ready to kill
anything and these two chaps happened to be the first you stumbled upon.
Well, I reckon those boys on the _Rambler_ will want to think of you as
a hero rushing to the rescue at the last moment, and I reckon that it
would be sorter mean to rob them of their faith and pride in you. But
that look on your face would give you dead away, so I guess I'll cover
you up a bit. Anyway, you're better deserving of a grave than that
fellow Bill was, so here goes."
Teddy Bear at last buried like a Christian, the Kid explored the clump
of cottonwood, and as he had expected, came upon a snug log cabin with a
big stone fire place. In one corner of it he came upon the stores stolen
from the _Rambler_. These he loaded on the sled and turned his dogs back
for the boat.
He was delighted with the improved appearance of his patients, who
already were beginning to show signs of a speedy recovery. As soon as he
ate the hearty dinner Ike had kept warm for him, he spread out his roll
of blankets near the stove and stretched out. "Call me at dark if I
don't wake up before," he directed Ike. "I am pretty well tuckered out.
I've been thirty-six hours on my feet and my legs are beginning to get
toothache."
Dark came, but the Kid was sleeping so soundly that Ike would not awaken
him until he had prepared the evening meal, fed the dogs, and brought in
the night's supply of wood for the Yukon stove. Even then it was
difficult to awaken him from his slumbers.
"Gee," he exclaimed, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "I thought I
had only just got asleep, and here it is after dark. How are the sick
boys coming on?"
"Fine," said Ike, happily. "Clay and Alex are not crazy in the head any
more, and they try to talk some. Case, he's much better too."
"Good," said the Kid. "Now I'll take a wash in the snow outside and by
the time I've tucked away some of that good supper I smell, I'll be fit
as a fiddle."
As soon as supper was over and things cleaned up, the Kid ordered Ike
and Abe to bed and took upon himself again the duties of nurse for the
night. They were the same as the night before, excepting that the boys
often awoke and tried to ply him with questions as to what had happened.
But on such occasions the Kid forced upon them bowls of hot milk and
firm commands to keep still, and they soon dropped off again into sound
slumber unbroken by tossing or mutterings.
When Ike awoke, he found the boys all sleeping soundly and the Kid
nodding in a chair beside the fire. "They'll be in pretty fair shape
when they wake up," the Kid declared. "Of course they'll be too weak to
get out of their beds for a couple of days, but you can let them talk
all they want to. Let them sleep as long as they will, though. I am
going to catch a cat nap now, but you can call me for breakfast, for I'm
hungry as a wolf."
It was not until the Kid had been aroused and breakfast had been eaten,
that Alex awoke and his clattering tongue soon aroused the other two.
It was a joyful morning in the _Rambler's_ cozy cabin and many were the
exclamations of wonder over Ike's story of the things that happened
during their long illness. "Did any of you boys take my uncle out of the
cabin and bury him?" he demanded as he ended his tale.
Clay and Case glanced at each other. "We did," Clay confessed. "We hated
to tell you then for we thought it was no use making things harder for
you during the long, gloomy winter ahead."
"Thank you, boys," said the little Jew simply, his eyes filling slowly
with tears. "Well, uncle is dead and I am free to tell about that letter
now. It ain't much to tell but what I told you already, Clay, and I
guess you told the other boys. My uncle tells me in it that he has found
a great treasure, enough to make us rich like princes and able to do a
great deal for the poor. He wants me, he says in the letter, to come and
bring all the cash I got, and tells me to be sure and not tell anyone
about it till we gets together, you understand. He says I'll find him at
Rainbow Bend. The rest of the letter was torn off by that Jud or Bill,
but I think maybe it tells how to find this Rainbow Bend, I don't know.
Well, boys, uncle is dead, and that wicked Bill and his poor brother
dead too, so I guess we never find out about the treasure."
The Kid, who had been an interested listener to Ike's story, fumbled in
his pocket and produced a small match safe snugly done up in oiled silk.
"I found this when I was looking through Bill's pockets, hunting for the
name of his folks or someone else to notify of his and Jud's death," he
remarked. "I looked at it but couldn't make head or tail of it. It looks
like a piece off a letter, but I reckon it's a kind of cipher from the
queer marks scattered over it. Maybe it might be the piece tom off your
letter, Ike?"
"Hold on a minute," said Clay, as Ike took the torn scrap of paper. "If
those men opened and read your uncle's letter, they had no need to go
clear to Chicago to try to make you tell them what was in it, and then
follow you clear up here again on the same errand when they already knew
all you knew of the letter's contents--more, in fact, for they had the
piece they had torn off which you had never seen."
"Put like a lawyer's question," exclaimed the Kid, admiringly.
"Very cute question, Clay," agreed Ike, "but easy to answer. My uncle
does not live in America long enough to learn to read and write English.
He writes to me in Hebrew. Them fellows think the same as Mr. Kid, that
the letter's a kind of cipher and that I've got the key to it. That's
why they keep after me all the time and try to make so much trouble.
This piece, Mr. Kid finds, just tells how to find Rainbow Bend. Well,
boys, that's all I know, and now I think I go out for a little walk and
get some fresh air."
"That clears up some of the mystery," said Clay, thoughtfully, "but
there are two things unexplained yet. Who put that strange notice of our
expecting to take this Yukon trip in the Chicago paper?"
"I think, perhaps," said Case, musingly, "that Bill did that himself. He
had been listening to our talking about the trip, and he thought that
notice would make a good excuse for Jud to call on us and try to arrange
passage for the two of them."
"That's as good a guess as any," Clay agreed. "The other mystery is,
what is the treasure, where is it, and how are we to find it? What do
you think about it, Mr. Yukon Kid?"
"I think the old man just dreamed it," said the Kid, bluntly. "Likely
the lonely life and the long darkness weakened him in his head and he
got to imagining things. There's not enough gold around here to gild a
baby's tooth. It isn't likely gold ground at the best. On top of that,
about every man who has gone up the Yukon has prospected here. If the
snow was off the ground you could see more prospect holes than you would
care to count in these two coves. There's iron and coal in that
mountain, no doubt, and, maybe, the old man got his idea of a treasure
from them. But they are valueless until we get railroads into this
country. The only treasure around here is these furs here in the
_Rambler_. You've got reason to be satisfied with them."