CHAPTER XX

THE FLAG ON THE CLIFF

“And the flag on the cliff indicates the spot where the gold was stored by nature long ago!” Frank whispered to Ned.

“I beg your pardon, boys,” suggested Gilroy stepping forward to where Ned and Frank were standing, “but if you’ll kindly direct me toward the camp, I’ll manage to get on alone. The fact of the matter is,” he continued, “that I’m faint with hunger.”

“Faint with hunger!” echoed Jimmie. “Mother of Moses! If you were half as hungry as I am, you’d be eating rock. I haven’t had anything to eat in so long that I wouldn’t know whether to chew a bear steak or to drink it. I’m near dead right now.”

“I think we’d all better hurry back to camp,” Ned suggested. “We may find something of a mixup there.”

“May I go with you?” asked Norman humbly.

“What about Toombs?” asked Ned. “If you are seen in our company, the telegram you have good reason to fear may be sent on to New York as soon as he can get out of the wilderness.”

Norman turned paler under the light of the moon and shrank back as if from a blow. His voice trembled as he spoke.

“I thank you for reminding me of my duty to my sister,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go back to Toombs. I don’t know what he’ll do to me because of my long absence, and because of the suspicious circumstances under which I left the camp. I’m afraid of him!”

“Now look here, Norman,” Frank advised, “this man Toombs is a welcher. He’s a dirty cur, and never kept a promise in his life which it was to his interest to disregard. Whatever you do for him, he’ll exact the last cent of the obligation which he has placed upon you, and will then, at the slightest whim, turn your sister over to the law. I don’t want to give you any advice calculated to get you into trouble, but were I in your place I think I’d go back there and beat his head off! The more you do for him, the stronger will be his grip upon you.”

“And I regard that as good advice!” Jack declared.

“Very good!” Nestor commented.

“I’ll go back with you if you want to beat him up!” offered Jimmie.

“And I’ll go along, too,” Harry said. “I’ve got a bum arm, all right, but I think I could help push that fellow into the Devil’s Punch Bowl.”

“Don’t resort to violence, boys! Don’t resort to violence!” pleaded Gilroy. “I’m shocked now to think how the laws of our country have been disobeyed tonight. Don’t go back to get into more trouble!”

“But look here,” exclaimed Jimmie, “you don’t know how smooth and fat and vicious this man Toombs is. I have never seen much of him, but I’ll tell you right now that he breathes out an atmosphere like that of a snake. I’ll get his goat yet!”

“Don’t be putting wild notions into the boy’s head,” laughed Frank. “I’ve got a better way than that to round up the old sea-serpent. We can get a messenger out to the telegraph station just as quickly as he can—perhaps quicker if we set Gilroy on the trail tonight. Now, I’ll write a long message to Dad and tell him all about it, and Dad’s got a pull in New York.”

“He’ll go to the District Attorney and calmly announce that he’ll smash him all to little pieces in his newspaper if he causes the arrest of that girl until after a full investigation has been made. What Dad can do in the District Attorney’s office is a wonder! We’ll fix old Toombs all right, all right! We’ll have him in jail as soon as he gets back to New York!”

“Will you start off toward the nearest telegraph office tonight, Gilroy?” asked Ned. “This is important, you know.”

“Give me something to eat and let me sleep a couple of hours,” replied the fat clerk, “and I’ll gladly go! I wouldn’t stay in this country one more day for all the gold there is in it!”

“Well, then,” Jack cut in, “I’ll send a telegram to my Dad, and he’ll co-operate with Frank’s ancestor, and I guess they can arrange matters so the girl won’t be arrested. If Dad isn’t in New York when the wire arrives, his confidential clerk will attend to it. I have them all trained to jump when I say the word. Dad lets me do just as I please, and they have to follow his example.”

“Now, Norman,” Ned exclaimed, “you may as well give Toombs the hook and come on back to camp with us. These two boys can do more for you in New York than a host of lawyers and bondsmen could do in a hundred years.”

“That’s good sense!” Harry exclaimed. “Come on back to camp with us and we’ll fat you up!”

“I’m going to assault the next person that talks about eating!” Jimmie declared. “Here I’m half starved to death and you keep on talking about eating. If you fellows had any pity in your hearts, some of you would run on ahead and meet me at the camp with a pie!”

“Well,” Frank said in a moment, “I don’t know why we don’t all hurry back to the camp. We may as well talk there as here. It’s all right to stroll and talk in the moonlight, but I never could be romantic when I was hungry. It’s agin’ human nature!”

The boys made good progress for an hour or more, and just as day was breaking, they came within sight of the cliff under which their camp was situated. They stood looking down from a higher elevation for a moment and then Ned pointed away to the south and east.

“Listen!” he said, bending his head forward.

“Bells!” shouted Jimmie. “Bells ringing at this time of the morning, away up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains! What do you make of that?”

“Mule bells!” scoffed Jimmie.

“I guess that’s right,” Harry agreed. “And there are the mules,” he went on, pointing. “They’ve brought some one in!”

“If they would only stop long enough to take me out!” wailed Gilroy, starting off as if in pursuit of the distant train of mules.

“Those beasts of burden are two hours’ travel from this point,” Frank advised. “They look to be only a short distance off, but you’d have to climb over a whole lot of land standing up on end to get to them.”

“Now who do you think the latest arrival is?” asked Jimmie.

“Probably a message from Dad,” Jack suggested.

“I’m sure of that!” Gilroy cried, gleefully. “I’m sure it’s an order for my recall. I’ll soon be out of this terrible country, safe in little old New York! It’s too good to be true!”

The boys now hastened toward the cliff and, turning sharply around the angle of rock, saw that the camp had indeed been occupied since their departure. A fire, which gave every indication of having recently been built, was burning and a number of cooking utensils stood near by.

Jimmie was about to spring forward for the purpose of making an assault on the provision chest when Ned caught him by the arm and held him back. Jimmie scowled but remained silent.

“Listen!” Ned said in a very low whisper. “There are people talking in the cave! I propose to find out what’s going on before making my appearance. Get the boys farther away,” he went on, “and I’ll see what I can learn. We may not be out of trouble yet.”

“Why, that’s the person that came in with the mule train,” whispered Jimmie. “Anyone ought to know that!”

“I don’t know whether it is or not!” Ned insisted. “Get the boys away and keep still, all of you.”

Gilroy opened his mouth to protest against being separated from the supply of food so near at hand, but Jimmie clapped a hand over his lips and led him away by main force. Then Ned crouched under the stones of the barrier and listened.

“It’s all up with you, Bosworth!” he heard the voice of Toombs saying. “You played your last card when you came in here in person, and I’ve taken the trick! Now you may as well be good!”

“No game is ever played out until the last card is on the table!” Jack’s father was heard to say. “You said when you came in here,” the lawyer went on, “that you would give me information of my son.”

“All in good time!” replied Toombs. “I understand,” the Wall street man continued “that you have in your possession papers showing the location of a very valuable mine known to exist in this section hundreds of years ago. Inform me as to the location of this mine, and I’ll inform you fully regarding your son.”

“Toombs,” Bosworth replied, “I wouldn’t trust you with a dirty bone that a dog wouldn’t take from my hand. You’re one of the pirates of Wall street! You never earned an honest dollar in your life. There are murders which might be laid at your door. You have wrecked private fortunes, and are no more to be trusted than a deadly rattler!”

Ned chuckled at this arraignment of the man who had given him so much trouble. The conversation certainly was amusing to him.

“Hard words break no bones!” laughed Toombs. “Say what you please, only give me the information I demand. And I insist on something more than the information, too,” he went on. “I want your promise that the corporation you represent will quit-claim all these lands to me.”

“To you?” asked Bosworth scornfully.

“Yes, to me!”

“Not to your clients, but to you personally?”

“To me, personally!”

“Thus placing you in a position to rob and blackmail your employers?”

“Call it what you like,” Toombs answered.

“I had been giving you credit for loyalty to the members of your thieving gang,” Bosworth said. “I see that I was mistaken.”

“But the information?” demanded Toombs.

“There are no such documents as you describe in existence!” the lawyer answered. “If there are, I am ignorant of the fact.”

Ned heard some one moving about in the cave, and then Toombs’ voice came again, speaking harshly and with vicious rage.

“You may as well accompany me to my camp,” Toombs said. “We can settle matters better there!”

“I shall not leave this place!” was the calm reply.

“But why wait longer here?” Toombs demanded fiercely. “This is a deserted camp. The boys who occupied it yesterday are dead, drowned at the Devil’s Punch Bowl. Your son with the others. You have no one in the hills to whom you can appeal for aid. If you persist in your refusal to deliver the papers and the information, you shall share the same fate. Will you come quietly?”

There was a scuffle and a blow, and when Ned gained the interior of the cave, he saw Bosworth lying on the floor with the blood springing from a slight wound on the forehead. Toombs made a motion toward his pistol-pocket as Ned appeared, but he was too late. A blow from the butt of the boy’s weapon laid him on the ground beside his victim.

Then the boys all came rushing in, and Jack was with difficulty restrained from giving the half-conscious Toombs a very bad beating.

“Let him alone,” Ned advised. “We’ll tie him up and take him out with us. There are many charges which can be placed against him.”

Jack’s father soon regained consciousness, and there followed a long and intimate conversation between the two. Too anxious to remain in New York after the departure of Gilroy, the father had followed on, trying his best to reach Gilroy by wire, but failing. He had traveled night and day, reaching the camp only three hours before the arrival of the boys.

The reader may well understand the kind of a meal that was prepared just after sunrise. After even Jimmie was satisfied the boys went to sleep, leaving Gilroy, who declared that he could never sleep again, moving about the camp. After a couple of hours the boys were awakened by shrill screams issuing from the throat of the fat clerk.

“The Indians! The Indians!” he shouted.

Ned sprang to his feet and looked keenly about but at first saw no cause for alarm. What he did see in a moment, however, brought a flush of anger to his face. The place where Toombs had lain was unoccupied! In some mysterious manner, the fellow had made his escape while the boys slept!

“The Indians did it!” insisted Gilroy, his teeth chattering with fright. “I saw an Indian creep up and cut the ropes. I was so frozen of terror that I couldn’t stop him. An awful, painted savage! He threatened me with a knife when I managed to look in his direction.”

While Gilroy was making this explanation, Jimmie sprang to his feet and darted swiftly out of the cave. Ned called to him to return, but he paid no attention. In a moment the boy was out of sight.